irst addressed when she met us at the door
of the house.

"Whose rabbit is that?" she asked sternly.

Racquet instantly dropped his catch and slowly approached Anne with a mien
of exaggerated abasement.

"If you were an out and out socialist, I shouldn't mind," Anne continued,
"but you shouldn't do these things if you're ashamed of them afterwards."

Racquet continued to supplicate her with bowed head, but he gave one
surreptitious flick of his stumpy tail, that to me had the irresistible
suggestion of a wink.

"Hypocrite!" Anne said, whereupon Racquet, correctly judging by her tone
that his forgiveness was assured, made one splendid leap at her, returned
with an altogether too patent eagerness to his rabbit, picked it up, and
trotted away round the corner of the house.

"Isn't he a humbug?" Anne asked looking at me, and continued without
waiting for my confirmation of the epithet, "Why didn't you let Arthur
carry that?"

"He carried it half the way," I said. "He and I are the out and out kind
of socialist."

She did not smile. "Father and mother are home," she said, turning to her
brother. "I can see by your face the sort of thing they've been saying to
you at the Hall, so I suppose we'd better have the whole story on the
carpet over supper. Father's been asking already what Brenda's here for."

XIII

FARMER BANKS

Anne showed me up to my room as soon as we entered the house, but her
manner was that of the hostess to a strange guest. She was polite, formal,
and, I thought, a trifle nervous. She left me hurriedly as soon as she had
opened the door of the bedroom, with some apology about having to "see to
the supper." (The smell of frying bacon had pervaded the staircase and
passages, and had helped me to realise that I was most uncommonly hungry.
Except for a very light lunch I had eaten nothing since breakfast.)

I got my first real feeling of the strangeness of the whole affair while I
was unpacking my suit-case in that rather stiff, unfriendly spare-room.
Until then the sequence of events had followed a hot succession, in the
current of which I had had no time to consider myself--my ordinary, daily
self--in relation to them. But the associations of this familiar position
and occupation, this adaptation of myself for a few hours to a strange
household, evoked the habitual sensations of a hundred similar
experiences. Twenty-four hours earlier I had been dressing for dinner at
Jervaise Hall, and d