ge a cigarette now.'

'Oh, I wouldn't,' Betty counselled.

After about a minute and a half, Miranda wholly agreed with her. Her
feeling when she looked up and saw her brother at the door was sheer
relief.

'I expect Warren's come for me,' she said, coughing out a cloud of
smoke.

Warren had come for her. It seemed that Mrs. Venables was anxious.

'I knew this was your lunch-place,' he explained to Betty, 'and we
guessed she might be with you. I'm sorry to interrupt--but you have
finished, haven't you? My mother will be anxious, you see.'

Miranda rose rather shakily and said good-bye. She had quite decided not
to take to smoking.

The aspect which the episode bore of the rescue of a truant child from
corrupting company was not assisted, certainly, by look or speech. It
was perhaps an aspect obvious enough to be left to itself, unaccentuated
and unadorned. Rather, indeed, it required, for courtesy's sake,
modification. Venables possibly intended to give it this. He had greeted
Betty and Gina and Morello (he had met these two before) with
pleasantness. He always was pleasant to the Crevequers' friends, though
the screen was sometimes rather flimsy. He was not, it seemed, shocked
or annoyed to find his young sister smoking in such a restaurant among
such company--merely his mother was anxious. His face, as his eyes had
passed from one to the other of his sister's companions, had been quite
impassive. What gave to Betty such realization as she at the time
got--it was not much--was mainly Mrs. Venables' anxiety, which must so
hurriedly be appeased. Betty had not known Mrs. Venables for an anxious
person; to be a fussing mother was to be _bornee_. But the suggestion
was not aggressive. Partly the green tints of Miranda's round face
served as a screen for the other elements in the situation. No one likes
his sister to look sick in a restaurant.

So Venables informed Miranda as they drove to their hotel.

'It's not considered particularly good form, you know, to smoke in
restaurants till you can do it fairly well. And, anyhow, that's not an
especially elegant place to select for the purpose--or, for that matter,
for any other purpose.'

'She always goes there,' Miranda returned limply.

Warren's eyebrows went up.

'Oh--she.... That's got nothing to do with you. Each lot of people's got
its own resorts.'

'But, Warren, you like her, don't you?'

'Who is "her"? Miss Crevequer? What's that got to do with it? I on