't take him back and leave him there," said Clovis; "the
highway is meant for traffic, not to be used as a lumber-room for
disused miracles."

Rose-Marie wept. The proverb "Weep and you weep alone," broke down as
badly on application as most of its kind. Both babies were wailing
lugubriously, and the parent Momebys had scarcely recovered from their
earlier lachrymose condition. Clovis alone maintained an unruffled
cheerfulness.

"Must I keep him always?" asked Rose-Marie dolefully.

"Not always," said Clovis consolingly; "he can go into the Navy when
he's thirteen." Rose-Marie wept afresh.

"Of course," added Clovis, "there may be no end of a bother about his
birth certificate. You'll have to explain matters to the Admiralty,
and they're dreadfully hidebound."

It was rather a relief when a breathless nursemaid from the Villa
Charlottenburg over the way came running across the lawn to claim
little Percy, who had slipped out of the front gate and disappeared
like a twinkling from the high road.

And even then Clovis found it necessary to go in person to the kitchen
to make sure about the asparagus sauce.

WRATISLAV

The Graefin's two elder sons had made deplorable marriages. It was,
observed Clovis, a family habit. The youngest boy, Wratislav, who was
the black sheep of a rather greyish family, had as yet made no marriage
at all.

"There is certainly this much to be said for viciousness," said the
Graefin, "it keeps boys out of mischief."

"Does it?" asked the Baroness Sophie, not by way of questioning the
statement, but with a painstaking effort to talk intelligently. It was
the one matter in which she attempted to override the decrees of
Providence, which had obviously never intended that she should talk
otherwise than inanely.

"I don't know why I shouldn't talk cleverly," she would complain; "my
mother was considered a brilliant conversationalist."

"These things have a way of skipping one generation," said the Graefin.

"That seems so unjust," said Sophie; "one doesn't object to one's
mother having outshone one as a clever talker, but I must admit that I
should be rather annoyed if my daughters talked brilliantly."

"Well, none of them do," said the Graefin consolingly.

"I don't know about that," said the Baroness, promptly veering round in
defence of her offspring. "Elsa said something quite clever on
Thursday about the Triple Alliance. Something about it being like a
paper um