ed the sound of
it; it made him feel as if he was in the country when he wasn't, and as
if it was the month of May, when there never was any month of May in
England; as if there were a maypole where the fountain is in Park Lane;
and as if processions, and processions of horses, splendid stallions and
brood-mares and thoroughbreds and hacks and great Suffolk punches with
their manes and tails tied up with ribbons were coming past his house to
the fair.

He may have felt like that about it. I put no limits to Jimmy's
imagination; but I suspected him of throwing out these airy fancies as a
veil to cover the preposterous nature of his ambition.

It was also the year when he began to talk about motor-cars and think
about motor-cars and dream about motor-cars at night.

And it was the year in which he and Viola went to the Riviera while the
plumbers and painters were at work on the house in Green Street, Mayfair.
They stayed away all autumn, and at the end of November they settled in.
And at Christmas they gave their house-warming.

It wasn't a large party--only a few friends of Viola's, and Jimmy's
lawyer and his doctor and his agent, and a few picked members of the
confraternity; the rest were Thesigers. If Jimmy had meant to give a
demonstration proving that he could gather the whole of his wife's family
round him at a pinch, he had all but succeeded. I suppose every available
member had turned up that night, except Reggie. The General and his wife
and daughters were there; and Charlie Thesiger and Bertie; and Canon and
Mrs. Thesiger (they had come up from Canterbury on purpose, and were
staying with the General); and Dorothy and Gwinny and their husbands; and
Victoria and Mildred, who stayed with Viola; and Millicent, who came to
us; and a whole crowd of miscellaneous aunts and cousins; perhaps sixty
altogether, counting outsiders.

Norah and I had been away for weeks in the country and had only got back
that afternoon, so we had not seen the house in Green Street since it had
been furnished. It burst, it literally burst, on us, without the smallest
warning or preparation.

Like Jimmy's first novel, it was designed to startle and arrest, hitting
you in the eye as you came in. The actual reception was held in the large
hall, which had been formed by turning what had once been the dining-room
loose into the passage and the stair-place.

So far the architect had done his work well. After that he had been left
to stru