n't mind, Nellie, do you?"--this to Miss Million.

"We all mess together in this place. I couldn't be worried with a
servant's hall. Make room for her there, Irene, will you? The girl looks
scared to death; it's all right, Miss--Smith, aren't you? Sit down,
child, sit down----"

Before I could say another word I found that a wooden chair had been
pushed squeakingly under me by some one. Knives and forks had been
clattered down in front of me by some one else. And there was I, sitting
almost in the lap of a very tiny, dark-eyed, gipsy-looking girl, in a
blouse without a collar and a pink linen sun hat pulled well down over
her small face.

On the other side of me, a big, lazy-looking blonde in a sky-blue sports
coat rocked her own chair a little away from mine, and said, in a
drowsy, friendly sort of voice: "Drop of ale, dear? Or d'you take a
glasser stout?"

Then the flood tide of talk and laughter seemed to flow on over my head
so fast that I literally could not make myself heard. I expostulated
that I had already had lunch, and that I didn't want anything to drink,
thanks, and that a gentleman was waiting outside on the step--but it
passed unheeded until my hostess caught my eye.

"What's that, what's that?" ejaculated Miss Vi Vassity, preening her
white-linen-bedecked bust across the table, as she saw me trying vainly
to say something against the uproar. "What's all that disturbance in the
dress circle, Bella?" The honey-blonde whom she called Bella turned to
me and said: "Speak up, dear; no one can hear your lines!" Then she made
a trumpet of her plump white hands and bellowed across to Miss Vi
Vassity:

"Says she's got her best boy with her, and that he is having to wait
outside on the steps!"

Here there was another general gale of laughter, in which my
crimson-cheeked explanations were quite lost! In the middle of it all I
saw the Honourable Jim rise from his seat, and stride into the hall and
bring in Mr. Jessop. He appeared to be introducing him to London's Love.
Miss Vi Vassity immediately made the new-comer sit down also, close to
her at the top of the table.

I have said it was a rather strange lunch that we had had earlier in the
morning at the little honeysuckle-covered inn, where we three had taken
cider and bread and cheese together. But it was nothing to the
extraordinary unexpectedness, yes, the weirdness in every way of this
second lunch, at the long table lined with all those strange types.