Ethel held out her empty cup.

"Very well. Then Mr. Weldon and I will discuss mosquitoes and seven-day
Baptists. No sugar, please, and I'd like another of those snappy
things."

"Does that mean a Mauser?" Weldon asked, as he brought back her cup.

"No. I mean biscuits, not cats. But you sinned then. However, my
cousin has her eye upon us, so we must be distinctly frivolous. Is
there any especially peaceful subject you would like to discuss?"

"Yes. Please explain your name."

She looked up at him with sudden literalness.

"It is for my grandmother. For four hundred years there has been an
Ethel Dent in every generation."

"I meant the other."

"Oh, Cooee?" She laughed. "It dates from our first coming out here,
when we were children. My old Kaffir nurse--I was only five, that
first trip--used to call me so, and every one took it up. We went
back to England, after a few weeks, and the name was dropped; but my
uncle stayed out here, and he and my cousin always kept the old
word."

Weldon stirred his tea thoughtfully.

"I rather like it, do you know?" he said.

"Surely, you don't think it fits me?"

His eyes moved from her shining hair to the hem of her elaborate
white gown. Then he smiled and shook his head.

"Not to-day, perhaps. But the Miss Dent of the Dunottar Castle--"

She interrupted him a little abruptly.

"Does that mean I am two-sided?"

"No; only complex."

She smiled in gracious response.

"You did that very well, Mr. Weldon," she said, with a slight accent
of superiority which galled him. Then, before he could reply, she
changed the subject, speaking with a lowered voice. "And what of the
Captain?"

It suited his mood not to understand her.

"In what way?"

"Every way. What do you think of him?"

Then she drew back, abashed by the fervor of the answer, as he said
slowly,--

"That the Creator made him, and then broke the pattern."

The little pause which followed caught the alert attention of the
hostess, and convinced her that it was time to shift the groups to
another combination. A swift gesture summoned Weldon to the table,
while Frazer dropped into his vacant chair. Ethel met the Captain
with only a half-concealed eagerness. This was not the first time
that a consciously trivial word of hers had been crushed out of life
by Weldon's serious dignity. She was never quite able to understand
his mood upon such occasions. The man was no prig. At times, he was
as merry as a boy.