“ Miss Beverley was patronising and gracious in her manner; Miss Damer's prevailing note was unaffected bonhomie. But where Miss Beverley slew her thousands, Miss Damer slew her tens of thousands; for she possessed what the other did not, that supreme gift of the gods--charm--magnetism--personality--whatever you like to call it. In all my life I have never known a human being who attracted her fellow-creatures with so little effort and so little intention, and who inspired love and affection so readily and lastingly, as Constance Damer. She never angled for admiration ”

“ She swung round towards the doorway, and pointed to the grotesque figure of that earnest student of the drama, Samuel Stillbottle, who was myopically deciphering a small but tattered document, all but concealed in the palm of his hand.
"We're paupers!" she cried. "We're in debt! We're broke! There's a distraint on the furniture; and that creature"--Mr. Stillbottle, hazily conscious that a cue was coming, furtively thrust his manuscript into his waistcoat pocket--"that creature is a broker's man! Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother!"
In an instant Martha Welwyn's arms closed round her daughter. ”

“ Amelia went with them, but returned almost immediately.
"Mrs. Carmyle is telling them a story in the dining-room," she said to her mother. "They are as good as gold with her."
"Dear Constance! She is a fairy godmother to all children," remarked Lady Adela, who was feeling quite remarkably beatific.
"Yes--children of all ages," corroborated Dicky, catching Tilly's eye.
"I declare," cried Mrs. Welwyn suddenly, as this pleasant episode terminated, "I had almost forgotten. Tilly dear, you had better take your grandmother's tea in to her."
"All right, Mother," assented Tilly blithely. ”

“ Dicky pondered.
"It depends," he said, "on what you mean by happy. Our measure of happiness, it seems to me, depends entirely on what we have compared with what we want. If I had never met you, I could never have missed you; and so I dare say I might have settled down happily enough--or what I considered happily enough--with some other girl. But that is impossible now. I have met you, you see. If I were to lose you"--Tilly caught her breath sharply--"no one else could ever take your place. Love like ours makes all substitutes tasteless and colourless, as they say in chemical laboratories. ”

“ Dicky and Tilly, nothing loath, wandered farther along the hillside, under strict injunctions not to return for twenty minutes. It was the first time that they had found themselves alone since their arrival on the previous evening, and they had long arrears of sweet counsel to make up.
"Dicky," said Tilly, suddenly breaking one of those long silences that all lovers know, "have you ever--loved any one before me?"
Most men are asked this question at some time in their lives, and few there be that have ever answered it without some mental reservation. ”

“ Tilly smiled politely, shook hands, but said nothing. Mr. Mainwaring, his heart sore for the girl, timidly signalled to his wife to leave her in peace.
"Do not trouble to show us out," said Lady Adela; and departed imposingly through the door.
With a long sigh of relief Tilly dropped back into her seat. Suddenly she was aware that she was not yet alone. Mr. Mainwaring had lingered in the room. He came forward now, and took the girl's hand in both of his.
"My dear, my dear!" he said quickly. "I wish you were my daughter. God give you a good husband!" ”

“ It is spread-eagled in a moment, Tilly--fixed, secured, and settled for life. And if it is the right stuff, sound metal all through, it will never wriggle or struggle or endeavour to back upon its appointed task of holding together its two steel plates. It won't want to. It will endure so long as the two plates endure. Nothing can shake him, that little rivet--nothing! Poverty, sickness, misunderstanding, outside interference--nothing will have any effect. That is the allegory. The wanderings of Dicky Mainwaring are over. ”

“ Amid appreciative shrieks of merriment from the twins, their fermenting playfellow rose solemnly to his feet, and was pausing dramatically for the double purpose of recovering his breath and deciding upon an effective scheme of reprisal, when he became aware that the door was open and that the master of the house was smilingly contemplating the entertainment.
"You three appear to be having a romp," said Mr. Welwyn genially. "You are evidently a lover of children, Mr. Stillbottle!" ”

“ Dicky glanced down upon the eager, wistful face beside him, and smiled whimsically.
"Madam," he said, "your fears are groundless."
"How do you know?" enquired Madam, convinced in her heart, but anxious to be reassured.
"Because," said Dicky simply, "you love me. You have said it. Don't you see how that binds me to you? The mere fact of your love for me makes mine for you imperishable. The moment a man discovers that the woman he loves loves him in return, he is hers, body and soul. ”

“ He merely turned towards the staircase, and exclaimed:--
"Hallo, here are Dad and Sylvia. These are the last two," he added in a reassuring undertone to Miss Welwyn. "Quite tame, both of them."
Mr. Mainwaring's face lit up joyfully at the sight of his son, and he hurried forward.
"Dick, my boy, you've arrived at last! Capital!" He clapped the prodigal on the shoulder.
"Yes, Dad," replied Dicky with equal zest; "we have arrived. This is Tilly!"
Mr. Mainwaring, entirely at sea but innately hospitable, greeted Tilly heartily. "You must be terribly cold," he said. ”

“ I
"This, Mum," announced Dicky in tones of immense pride, "is Tilly. Miss Welwyn, you know."
He advanced to the girl, who still stood hesitatingly in the opening of the curtains, and drew her forward by the hand.
"Come along, little thing," he said, in a voice which made Connie Carmyle's heart warm to him. "Don't be frightened. I present to you my lady mother. You will know one another intimately in no time," he added untruthfully.
Miss Tilly Welwyn advanced with faltering steps. ”

“ His approval of the late lair of the bellicose Pumpherston when--almost before--the panting Mrs. Welwyn had pulled up the blind and unveiled its glories, erred on the side of the ecstatic. The terms asked for the dingy but speckless apartment were not excessive, and Mr. Rylands agreed to them at once.
"May I ask, sir," enquired Mrs. Welwyn, as they descended the staircase--"did some one recommend us? We like to know who our friends are." ”

“ Welwyn is not what we call a lady," proceeded Dicky, "but she is the right stuff all through. I admit that she has not been quite successful in her efforts to polish Percy, but look at the others! The little sister, 'Melia, is a dear. The twins are rippers. Old Welwyn--well, he's a rotter, but he's a gentlemanly rotter; which pretty well describes the majority of my friends, now I come to think of it. And he is no hypocrite: he is quite frank about his weaknesses. Now, to sum up. On her father's side Tilly is a lady; on her mother's side she is a brick. ”

“ Lady Adela nodded her head intelligently.
"Ah, to be sure!" she said. "Let me see. Are they a Warwickshire family, now?"
"Or is it a Cornish name?" queried Sylvia, with an encouraging smile.
"No," said Tilly. "Mother came from Bedfordshire--or else Cambridgeshire," she added rather breathlessly, for the four eyes of the sphinxes were upon her once more.
"But, dear Miss Welwyn--" began Sylvia.
I can stand this no longer! scribbled Connie, and threw down her pen.
"Thank goodness, that's over!" she exclaimed, rising and coming over to the fire. "What a nuisance affectionate husbands are! ”

“ Presently Dicky took up his parable.
"Hearken, O my Daughter," he began characteristically, "to the words of the Prophet. Behold, I tell you an allegory! Do you know what riveting is?"
"No, dear. Women don't understand machinery," replied Tilly resignedly, in the tones of a young mother threatened with an exposition of the mechanism of her firstborn's clockwork engine.
"Well, a rivet," pursued the Prophet, "is a metal thing like a small mushroom. It is used for binding steel plates together, and requires two people to handle it properly. ”

“ Amelia obediently put over her helm, and despite a heavy list to starboard induced by a sudden shifting of ballast (in the form of the hot-water jug) ultimately weathered the sofa and deposited the breakfast tray in the fender, without throwing overboard anything of greater moment than a piece of buttered toast.
By the fireside, in a very large armchair, sat a small, alert, wizened, and querulous old lady of eighty-one.
"Cup of tea, Grannie?" said Amelia.
"What's that?" enquired Mrs. Josiah Banks--late of Bedfordshire (or Cambridgeshire) .
"Will you have a cup of tea?" ”

“ To lecture you as if you were some designing little adventuress, instead of the most wonderful worker of miracles that ever lived--the girl who made bricks without straw--the girl who made a man of Dicky Mainwaring! ”

“ There are few sadder sights than that of an old man eating humble pie to a young man.
But Dicky, The Freak, was equal to the occasion. He answered gravely:--
"The point of view which I prefer to take, Mr. Welwyn, is this--that you were all trying to do a good turn to Tilly."
"Thank you, Dick," said Mr. Welwyn simply. "Still, there was a second reason which I thought might perhaps keep you away."
"What was that?"
"Well--the presence in one's abode of a sheriff's officer is apt to exercise a dispersive influence upon one's calling acquaintance." ”

“ I had considered him just a harmless bounder, who would tone down when he got into the ways of the place. But a fellow who would talk like that before a roomful of men about a girl--his own girl--My God, Tiny! what would you do with such a thing?"
"Kill it," I said simply.
"That's what we nearly did, on the spot," said Dicky. "But--well--one feels a delicacy about even taking notice of that sort of stuff. You understand?"
I nodded. The reserve of the youthful male on affairs of the heart is much deeper than that of the female, though the female can never recognise the fact. ”

“ Hilda would have been proud of me that day," replied The Freak, sighing over his lost talent. "Now she thinks me too flippant and easy-going. Lacking in dignity, and so forth. But if you watch me carefully during your stay here you will find that I have very largely regained my old form. I am getting frightfully intellectual. You ought to see us reading Browning together before breakfast. It is a sublime spectacle. Talking of sublime spectacles, we are all going to Laxley Races on Tuesday, and I can give you an absolutely dead snip for the Cup." ”

“ But The Freak merely looked surprised--almost hurt.
"Loved any one before? I should think I had!" he replied. "Who has n't?"
"I have not," said Tilly,
Dicky was quite prepared for this.
"I meant men--not girls," he said. "Girls are different. Not that some of them don't fall in and out of love rather easily, but they only do it as a sort of pleasant emotional exercise. The average male lover, however youthful, means business all the time. Quite right, too! It is a healthy masculine instinct for an Englishman to want to found a household of his own just as soon as he grows up. ”

“ At half-past eight next morning Connie Carmyle, wearing a tweed coat and skirt and neat brown brogues, came whistling downstairs, intent upon a constitutional before breakfast.
Upon the sofa in front of the hall-fire, self-consciously perusing a Sunday newspaper, sat a large man of slightly sheepish appearance. At the sight of Connie he rose guiltily to his feet. Mrs. Carmyle embraced him in a motherly fashion. ”

“ She begged Tilly to think things over, and assured her that no reasonable request would be refused. Altogether Lady Adela's was a very conciliatory and well-balanced proposition. Had it been made by an encroaching railway company to a landed proprietor in compensation for compulsory ejection from his property, or by a repentant motorist to an irate henwife, it might fairly have been regarded as a model of justice and equity. As a scheme for snatching an amiable but weak-minded young man from the clutches of a designing harpy, it erred if anything on the side of generosity. ”

“ It is high time Dick was married, and this time I really do think--no, I feel it instinctively--that Norah Puncheon is the right woman for him."
"The right woman!" replied the late First Reserve pensively. "How awful that always sounds! The wrong one is always so much nicer!"
"My dear," exclaimed the horrified Lady Adela, "whoever put such a notion into your head?"
"Dicky. He told me so himself."
"Has Norah Puncheon much influence over him, do you know?" continued Lady Adela, falling back on to safer ground.
"Yes, lots," replied Connie, stifling the tiniest of yawns. ”

“ Wickham's table-linen.
"Roll him up in the tablecloth," was The Freak's next order, "and set him on a chair."
This time Jebson found his tongue.
"Gentlemen all," he gasped between revolutions--the Master of the Bloodhounds and Baron Guldenschwein were swiftly converting him into a snowy cocoon--"a joke's all very well in its way between pals; but--"
"Put him on that chair," continued Dicky, taking not the slightest notice.
Willing hands dumped the mummified and inanimate form of Jebson into an armchair, and the unique collection of Sports sat round him in a ring. ”

“ I don't believe that I could ever really throw myself absolutely headlong into love with a girl unless I knew in my heart that she was prepared to do the same for me. They are all so cautious, so self-contained, so blooming independent, nowadays, that a man simply cannot let himself go on one of them for fear she should turn round and laugh at him. ”

“ But Tilly was not quite satisfied.
"I should like to feel," she said, instinctively giving utterance to that point of view which makes a woman's love such an intensely personal and jealously exacting thing in comparison with a man's, "that you could never have been happy with any woman in the world but me. Could you, Dicky?" ”

“ Connie continued, "whether he had a wife and children to support; so I asked him if he was married. He said he was afraid he was, but if ever he became a widower he would let me know. We left after that."
"Constance, dear child!" began Lady Adela, amid unseemly laughter.
"It was all right, Lady Adela," Miss Damer assured her. "They were quite a nice crowd, and I had Dicky with me."
"You are a great deal better able to take care of yourself than I am, old lady," said The Freak admiringly.
I saw Miss Beverley's fine eyes rest disapprovingly for a moment upon her philogynistic swain. ”

“ But never mind Dicky for a moment. What I want to say is this. In dealing with people of this kind--people who regard those who have no money as so much dirt beneath their feet--there is only one thing that pays; and that thing," she concluded with intense conviction, "is--swank, swank, swank!"
"Good old Tilly!" shouted Percy enthusiastically; and the rest of the Welwyns, quite carried away by their small despot's earnestness, beat upon the table with their fists. ”

“ Mr. Mainwaring is no trouble, and things are so cheap. The only drawback is Sylvia. She dislikes the people about here."
"By the way," enquired Connie, recovering her spirits, "what is Sylvia's exact line just at present? Last year it was slumming; the year before it was poker-work, and the year before that it was Christian Science. What does that sage-green gown mean? Don't tell me she has become a Futurist, or a Post-Impressionist, or anything!"
"I never attempt," replied Lady Adela, closing her eyes resignedly, "to cope with Sylvia's hobbies. At present she is a Socialist of some kind. ”