eanwhile the boy has no one to look after him. It's obviously my duty
to see that he doesn't come to harm. Bring him to call on me."

"My dear Aunt Susan," expostulated Lucas, "I really know very little
about him. He may not be at all nice, you know, on further
acquaintance."

"He has delightful hair and a weak mouth. I shall take him with me to
Homburg or Cairo."

"It's the maddest thing I ever heard of," said Lucas angrily.

"Well, there is a strong strain of madness in our family. If you
haven't noticed it yourself all your friends must have."

"One is so dreadfully under everybody's eyes at Homburg. At least you
might give him a preliminary trial at Etretat."

"And be surrounded by Americans trying to talk French? No, thank you.
I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing
it is that they never try to talk English. To-morrow at five you can
bring your young friend to call on me."'

And Lucas, realizing that Susan Mebberley was a woman as well as an
aunt, saw that she would have to be allowed to have her own way.

Adrian was duly carried abroad under the Mebberley wing; but as a
reluctant concession to sanity Homburg and other inconveniently
fashionable resorts were given a wide berth, and the Mebberley
establishment planted itself down in the best hotel at Dohledorf, an
Alpine townlet somewhere at the back of the Engadine. It was the usual
kind of resort, with the usual type of visitors, that one finds over
the greater part of Switzerland during the summer season, but to Adrian
it was all unusual. The mountain air, the certainty of regular and
abundant meals, and in particular the social atmosphere, affected him
much as the indiscriminating fervour of a forcing-house might affect a
weed that had strayed within its limits. He had been brought up in a
world where breakages were regarded as crimes and expiated as such; it
was something new and altogether exhilarating to find that you were
considered rather amusing if you smashed things in the right manner and
at the recognized hours. Susan Mebberley had expressed the intention
of showing Adrian a bit of the world; the particular bit of the world
represented by Dohledorf began to be shown a good deal of Adrian.

Lucas got occasional glimpses of the Alpine sojourn, not from his aunt
or Adrian, but from the industrious pen of Clovis, who was also moving
as a satellite in the Mebberley constellation.

"The entertainment whi