st the dining-room
windows, at the top of his speed, and Miss St. Quentin followed him at
a hardly less unconventional pace. Together they burst, by the small,
arched side-door, into the lobby. There ensued discussion lively though
brief. Then, Winter setting wide the dining-room door in invitation,
sight of Honoria was presented to the company assembled within.--She,
in brave attire of dark, red cloth, black braided and befrogged, heavy,
silk cords and knotted, dangling tassels--head-gear to match, dark red
and black, a tall, stiff aigrette set at the side of it--in all
producing a something delightfully independent, soldierly, ruffling
even, in her aspect, as she pushed the black-haired, bright-faced,
slim-made lad, her two hands on his shoulders, before her into the
room.

"May we come to luncheon as we are, Cousin Katherine?" she cried.
"We're scandalously late, but we're also most ferociously hungry
and----"

But here, although Lady Calmady turned on her a welcoming and far from
unjoyful countenance, she stopped dead, while Godfrey incontinently
gave vent to that which his younger brother--sitting beside his mother,
Mary Ormiston, at table, on Richard Calmady's right--described mentally
as "the most awful squawk." Which squawk, it may be added--whatever its
effect upon other members of the company--as denoting involuntary and
unceremonious descent from the high places of thirteen-year-old,
public-school omniscience on the part of his elder, produced in
eight-year-old Dick Ormiston such overflowings of unqualified rapture
that, for a good two minutes, he had to forego assimilation of
chocolate _soufflet_, and, slipping his hands beneath the table,
squeeze them together just as hard as ever he could with both knees, to
avoid disgracing himself by emission of an ecstatic giggle. For once he
had got the whip hand of Godfrey!--Having himself, for the best part of
an hour now, been conversant with interesting developments, he found it
richly diverting to behold his big brother thus incontinently bowled
over by sudden disclosure of them. He repressed the giggle, with the
help of squeezing knees and a certain squirming all down his neat,
little back, but his blue eyes remained absolutely glued to Godfrey's
person, as the latter, recovering his presence of mind and good
manners, proceeded solemnly up to the head of the table to greet his
unlooked-for host.

Honoria, meanwhile, if guiltless of an audible squawk, had been