sting?" said Helen.

"They will not sting, but they may infest the victuals," said Miss
Allan, and measures were taken at once to divert the ants from their
course. At Hewet's suggestion it was decided to adopt the methods of
modern warfare against an invading army. The table-cloth represented the
invaded country, and round it they built barricades of baskets, set
up the wine bottles in a rampart, made fortifications of bread and dug
fosses of salt. When an ant got through it was exposed to a fire of
bread-crumbs, until Susan pronounced that that was cruel, and rewarded
those brave spirits with spoil in the shape of tongue. Playing this game
they lost their stiffness, and even became unusually daring, for Mr.
Perrott, who was very shy, said, "Permit me," and removed an ant from
Evelyn's neck.

"It would be no laughing matter really," said Mrs. Elliot confidentially
to Mrs. Thornbury, "if an ant did get between the vest and the skin."

The noise grew suddenly more clamorous, for it was discovered that a
long line of ants had found their way on to the table-cloth by a back
entrance, and if success could be gauged by noise, Hewet had every
reason to think his party a success. Nevertheless he became, for no
reason at all, profoundly depressed.

"They are not satisfactory; they are ignoble," he thought, surveying
his guests from a little distance, where he was gathering together the
plates. He glanced at them all, stooping and swaying and gesticulating
round the table-cloth. Amiable and modest, respectable in many ways,
lovable even in their contentment and desire to be kind, how mediocre
they all were, and capable of what insipid cruelty to one another!
There was Mrs. Thornbury, sweet but trivial in her maternal egoism; Mrs.
Elliot, perpetually complaining of her lot; her husband a mere pea in
a pod; and Susan--she had no self, and counted neither one way nor the
other; Venning was as honest and as brutal as a schoolboy; poor old
Thornbury merely trod his round like a horse in a mill; and the less
one examined into Evelyn's character the better, he suspected. Yet these
were the people with money, and to them rather than to others was given
the management of the world. Put among them some one more vital, who
cared for life or for beauty, and what an agony, what a waste would they
inflict on him if he tried to share with them and not to scourge!

"There's Hirst," he concluded, coming to the figure of his friend; with
his