as disposed to
be friendly and conversational, but to Eloquent the fact that he was
going to Redmarley was no ordinary occurrence, and he would infinitely
have preferred to have driven out alone, or, better still, to have
walked through the soft spring night from his aunt's house to the
Manor, which still held something of the glamour that had surrounded it
in his childhood.

For him it was still "the Manshun," immense, remote, peopled by
inhabitants fine and strange, and far removed from ordinary life. A
house whose interior common folk were, it is true, occasionally allowed
to see, walking on tiptoe, speaking in whispers, led and instructed by
an important rustling old lady who wore an imposing cap and a silk
apron; a strange, silent house where none save servants ever seemed to
come and go. He had not yet quite recovered from the shock it was to
him to hear voices and laughter in that old panelled hall which he had
known in childhood as so vast and shadowy. He liked to remember all
this, and to feel that he was going there as THEIR guest, to be with
THEM on intimate friendly terms. It was wonderful, incredible; it was
part of the dream.

". . . don't you think so, Mr Gallup?" asked Miss Bax, and Eloquent
woke with a start to realise that he had not heard a word his pretty
neighbour was saying. He was thankful that the motor was dark and that
the others could not notice how red he was.

"I beg your pardon," he said loudly, leaning forward, "I didn't catch
what you said."

"Is the man deaf?" Miss Bax wondered, for the motor was a Rolls-Royce
and singularly smooth and noiseless. "I was saying," she went on
aloud, "that it will probably be my lot to go in to dinner with Grantly
Ffolliot, and that cadets as a class are badly in need of snubbing;
don't you agree with me?"

"I haven't met any except young Mr Ffolliot," Eloquent said primly,
"and I must say he did not strike me as a particularly conceited young
man."

"He isn't," Sir George broke in, "he's an exceedingly nice boy, they
all are. Their mother has seen to that."

"Boys are so difficult to talk to," Miss Bax lamented; "their range is
so limited, and my enthusiasm for football is so lukewarm."

"Try him on his profession," Lady Campion suggested.

"That would be worse. Cadets do nothing but tell you how hard they are
worked, and what a fearful block there is in the special branch of the
army they are going in for. Is young Ffolliot going to b