ek that Miss Million
says we are going to stay here. He thinks, I know, that after all he
will "get round her" to like him.

As if, poor fellow! he had any chance at all against a man like the
Honourable Jim!

Well! He'll soon see, that's all!

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE CROWDED HOLIDAY

WE have now been staying for two crowded days at the "Refuge." It has
certainly been the most extraordinary holiday of my life. A quite
indescribable one, too!

For when I try to put down in words my impression of what has been
happening, I find in my mind nothing but the wildest jumble of things.
There's a background of sun-lit, open country, wide blue sky patrolled
by rolling white clouds, green downs strewn with loose flint, chalk
wastes on which a patch of scarlet poppies stands out like a made-up
mouth on a dead white face of a pierrot, glimpses of pale cliff beyond
the downs, and of silver-grey Channel further still.

These things are blurred in a merry chaos with so many new faces!
There's the drowsy, good-natured, voluptuous face of "Marmora, the
breathing statue-girl," as she lounged in the deck-chair in the shadow
of the lilacs, crunching Mackintosh's toffee-de-luxe and reading "The
Rosary." The tiny, vivacious face of the Boy-Impersonator. The shrewd
face of Vi Vassity, the mistress of the "Refuge," melting into
unexpected tenderness as she bends over the new baby that belongs to the
ventriloquist's wife, the little bundle with the creasy pink face and
the hands that are just clusters of honeysuckle buds....

So many sounds, too, are mixed up with this jumble of fresh impressions!

Rustling of sea winds in the immemorial elm trees. Buzzing of bees in
the tall limes all hung with light-green fragrant tassels! Twittering of
birds! Comfortable, crooning noises of plump poultry in the back yard of
the "Refuge."

Through all these sound the chatter and loud laughter of the "resting"
theatrical girls with their eternal confidences that begin, "I said to
him just like this," and their "Excuse me, dears," and their sudden
bursts of song. How the general rush, and whirl, and glitter, and
clatter of them would make my Aunt Anastasia feel perfectly faint!

Eight or ten aspirins, I should think, would not be enough to restore
her, could she but have a glimpse of the society into which Lady
Anastasia's great-granddaughter is now plunged.

And in such an "infra dig." po