ding for his exams for the Army.
If they opened his head, though, I doubt if they'd find anything but
cricket and football, unless it might be a bit of golf. Well--that's the
party. I thought you might like to have a notion of them in advance. If
you've finished your cigarette"--he threw his own into the grate, and
rose as he spoke--"we may as well be moving along. By the way," he
concluded, as they walked toward the door, "I've an idea that we won't
say anything, just at the moment, about our great coup. I should like to
keep it as a little surprise--for my mother and sister, you know."

Some two hours later, Thorpe found the leisure and the restored
equanimity needful for a dispassionate survey of his surroundings. He
had become temporarily detached from the group over by the fireplace in
the big drawing-room and was for the first time that evening very much
at his ease. It was all much simpler, upon experiment, than he had
feared. He stood now in a corner of the ornate apartment, whither he had
wandered in examining the pictures on the walls, and contemplated with
serenity the five people whom he had left behind him. He was conscious
of the conviction that when he rejoined them, it would be on a
new footing of assured equality. He knew now the exact measure of
everything.

The Hon. Balder Plowden--a tall, heavily-built youth, with enormous
shoulders and thick, hard hands, and pale straw-coloured hair and brows
and eyelashes--had amiably sauntered beside him, and was elucidating for
his benefit now, in slow, halting undertones, some unfathomable mystery
connected with the varying attitude of two distinct breeds of terriers
toward rats. Across the room, just within reach of the flickering ruddy
firelight from the hearth, the American guest, Miss Madden, was seated
at the piano, playing some low and rather doleful music. Thorpe bent
his head, and assumed an air of attention, but in truth he listened
to neither the Honourable Balder nor the piano. His thoughts were
concentrated jealously upon his own position in this novel setting. He
said to himself that it was all right. Old Lady Plowden had seemed
to like him from the start. The genial, if somewhat abstracted,
motherliness of her welcome had been, indeed, his sheet anchor
throughout the evening. She had not once failed to nod her head and
smile and twinkle her little kind eyes through their spectacles at him,
whenever by word or look he had addressed her. Nor did his