"I know few things more unpleasant than having one's silly remarks
brought up to one years afterwards," says Olga, with increasing temper.

"_Months_ not _years_," says Rossmoyne, carefully. Whereupon Mrs. Bohun
turns her back upon him, and Mrs. Herrick tells herself she would like
to give him a good shake for so stupidly trying to ruin his own game,
and Ulic Ronayne feels he is on the brink of swearing with him an
eternal friendship.

"Bangles?" breaks in Owen Kelly, musingly. "Harmless little circular
things women wear on their wrists, aren't they? But awkward too at
times,--amazingly awkward. As Olga has feelingly remarked, they _can_
make a marvellously loud tinkle-tinkle at times. I know a little story
about bangles, that ought to be a warning against the use of them. Would
any one like to hear my little story? It is short, but very sweet."

Every one instantly says "Yes," except Olga, who has drawn herself
together and is regarding him with a stony glare.

"Well, there was once on a time a young woman, who had some bangles, and
a young man; she had other things too, such as youth and beauty, but
they weren't half so important as the first two items; and wherever she
and her bangles went, there went the young man too. And for a long time
nobody knew which he loved best, the beauteous maiden or the gleaming
bangles. Do I make myself clear?"

"Wonderfully so, for _you_," says Mrs. Herrick.

"Well one day the young man's preference was made 'wonderfully so' too.
And it was in this wise. On a certain sunny afternoon, the young woman
found herself in a conservatory that opened off a drawing-room, being
divided from it only by a hanging Indian curtain; a _hanged_ Indian
curtain she used to call it ever afterwards; but that was bad grammar,
and bad manners too."

"I feel I'm going to sleep," says Desmond, drowsily. "I hope somebody
will rouse me when he has done, or pick me out of the water if I drop
into it. Such a rigmarole of a story I never heard in my life."

"Caviare can't be appreciated by the general; it is too strong for you,"
says Mr. Kelly, severely. "But to continue----Anything wrong with you,
my dear Olga?"

"Nothing!" says Mrs. Bohun, with icy indignation.

"Well. In this conservatory my heroine of the bangles found herself; and
here, too, as a natural consequence, was found the young man. There was
near them a lounge,--skimpy enough for one, but _they_ found it amply
large for _two_. Curious fact