e rooms." She transfixed him with a
stare.

"I find it delightfully cool, George." She called him George only when
it was impossible to call him just what she wanted to.

The tea things did not come in; in their stead came pretty Mrs. Browne.
She stood in the doorway, a pleading sincere smile on her face.

"Won't you _please_ join Mr. Browne and me in that dear little garden?
It's so cool up there and it must be dreadfully warm here. Really, you
should move at once into Mr. Wyckholme's old apartments across the court
from ours. They are splendid. But, now _do_ come and have tea with us."

Whether it was the English love of tea or the American girl's method of
making it, I do not know, but I am able to record the fact that Lord and
Lady Deppingham hesitated ever so briefly and--fell.

"Extraordinary, Browne," said Deppingham, half an hour later. "What
wonders you chaps can perform."

"Ho, ho!" laughed Browne. "We only strive to land on our feet, that's
all. Another cigarette, Lady Deppingham?"

"Thank you. They are delicious. Where do you get them, Mr. Browne?"

"From the housekeeper. Your grandfather brought them over from London.
My grandfather stored them away."

CHAPTER VIII

THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S

It was quite forty-eight hours before the Deppinghams surrendered to the
Brownes. They were obliged to humbly admit, in the seclusion of their
own councils, that it was to the obnoxious but energetic Britt that they
owed their present and ever-growing comfort.

It is said that Mr. Saunders learned more law of a useful and purposeful
character during his first week of consultation with Britt than he could
have dreamed that the statutes of England contained. Britt's brain was a
whirlpool of suggestions, tricks, subterfuges and--yes, witticisms--that
Saunders never even pretended to appreciate, although he was obliging
enough to laugh at the right time quite as often as at the wrong. "He
talks about what Dan Webster said, how Dan Voorhees could handle a jury,
why Abe Lincoln and Andy Jackson were so--" Saunders would begin in a
dazzled sort of way.

"Mr. Saunders, will you be good enough to ask Bromley to take Pong out
for a walk?" her ladyship would interrupt languidly, and Saunders would
descend to the requirements of his position.

Late in the afternoon of the day following the advent of the Brownes,
Lord and Lady Deppingham were laboriously fanning themselves in the
midst of their stifling Mari