and automobiles; and I
recalled tracing pneu-tracks like illusive lights and shadows before us
on the damp road, as we spun into Tintagel. No doubt they were the pneus
of the Tyndals.

Their table was next ours in the dining room, so close that motor-chat
was tossed back and forth, and it appeared that Mr. Tyndal was as proud
of his car as a cat of its mouse. Mrs. Tyndal's mice are her jewels, and
she has droves of them, which she displayed at dinner. Afterward she did
lace-work, which made her rings gleam beautifully, and she said she
didn't particularly like doing it, but it was something to "kill time."
How awful! But I suppose frightfully rich people are like that. They
sometimes get fatty degeneration of the soul.

Well, nothing more happened that evening, except that the Tyndal boy and
I made great friends--quite a nice boy, pining for some mischief that
idle hands might do; and his cousins said that, as we were going to stop
several days at Tintagel, "making it a centre," they would stop, too.
Sir Lionel didn't appear overjoyed at the decision, but Mrs. Senter
seemed glad. She and her sister, Mrs. Burden, have known the Tyndals for
years, and are by way of being friends, yet she works off her little
firework epigrams against them when their backs are turned, as she does
on everybody. According to her, their principal charm for society in
London is their cook; and she says the art treasures in their house are
all illegitimate; near-Gobelin, not-quite-Raphaels, and so on. She makes
Sir Lionel smile; but I wonder if she'd adopt this cheap method if he'd
ever mentioned to her (as he has to me) that of all meannesses he
despises disloyalty?

The Tyndal boy went up to bed before the rest of us, and when Sir Lionel
and Mrs. Norton had been forced to play bridge with Mrs. Senter and Mr.
Tyndal, I slipped away, too.

We'd lived in the hotel such a short time, and it's so big, that I
counted on recognizing my room by the boots which I put outside the door
when I went down to sunset and dinner. Of course, I'd forgotten my
number, as I always do. I wouldn't consider myself a normal girl if I
didn't.

There were the boots, not taken away yet--looking abject, as boots do in
such situations--but I was pleased to see that they compared favourably
in size with the gray alligator-skin and patent leather eccentricities
of Mrs. Senter, reposing on an adjacent doormat. With this frivolous
reflection in my mind, it didn't occur