"Rot—be a sport."
"But he leaves me cold," objected the "sport."
"So much the better. Didn't I help you when young Maunder was staying at Norton Hall? You owe me one over that."
"Oh, all right, then," assented Alicia. "I shall have to gas to Lady Manners all the afternoon. 'Snice, I don't think."
"Lady Manners is away. Gone to town with old Sir Stick-in-the-mud. But, of course, we shan't know that—get all in a flutter——"
Alicia opened her heavy-lidded eyes wide. "My dear!" she cried, and then, spinning round to the key-board, vamped the opening bars of Mendelssohn's Wedding March.
"Shur-r-r up!" shrieked Josephine, with a burst of abrupt laughter somehow suggestive of the cry of the green woodpecker.
All unconscious of the tremors he had awakened in the maidenly bosom of Josephine Smedley, Graeme Jakes sallied forth to meet his guests. He had mapped out a programme for their amusement with considerable care, harking back in memory to the far-off days when as a little boy he was bidden to spend adventurous afternoons at adjoining country houses, where there were always swarms of children, and the gardeners locked the doors of the wall-gardens as a precaution——
Well, there would be no doors locked that afternoon. He had seen to that, and the tea, with its piles of cakes and pyramids of fruit, bowls of cream and dishes of Mrs. Mackworth's famous preserves, materialised the vision of a meal he had always dreamed as a child, and somehow never achieved in waking hours.
He met his guests half-way up the avenue through the park, a demure-looking little group from which first Cornelius James and then Jane detached themselves and sped to greet him.