"We shall be amongst horses in a minute," she observed with a sigh. "I can smell the stables already," and she retired to her book in the embrasure of the window.
A joyous and noisy company burst into the room. Sir Chichester, with larger mother-of-pearl buttons on his fawn-coloured overcoat than ever decorated even a welshing bookmaker on Brighton Downs, led Hillyard up to Lady Splay.
"My wife. Millie, Mr. Hillyard."
Hints of Lady Splay's passion for the last new person had prepared Hillyard for a lady at once gushing and talkative. He was surprised to find himself shaking hands with a pleasant, unassuming woman of distinct good looks. Hillyard was presented to Dennis and Miranda Brown, a young couple two years married, and to Mr. Harold Jupp, a man of Hillyard's age. Harold Jupp was a queer-looking person with a long, thin, brown face, and a straight, wide mouth too close to a small pointed chin. Harold Jupp carried about with him a very aura of horses. Horses were his only analogy; he thought in terms of horses; and perhaps, as a consequence, although he could give no reasons for his judgments upon people, those judgments as a rule were conspicuously sound. Jupp shook hands with Hillyard, and turned to the student at the window.
"Well, Joan, how have you lived without us? Aren't you bored with your large, beautiful self?"
Joan looked at him with an annihilating glance, and crossed the room to Millie Splay.
"Bored! How could I be? When I have so many priceless wasted hours to make up for!"
"Yes, yes, my dear," said Millie Splay soothingly. "Come and have some tea."
"That's it, Joan," cried Jupp, unrepressed by the girl's contempt. "Come and have tea with the barbarians."
Joan addressed herself to Dennis Brown, as one condescending from Olympus.