"Stiff!"

"Don't you find him a little starchy?"

"If you mean that Lord Hunstanton's manners are perfect, I agree with you."

"I'm not sure that I like a man's manners to be too perfect," said Molly meditatively. "Don't you think a shy man can be rather attractive?" She scraped the toe of one gold shoe against the heel of the other. "The sort of man I think I should rather like," she said, a dreamy look in her eyes, "would be a sort of slimmish, smallish man with nice brown eyes and rather gold-y, chestnutty hair, who kind of looks at you from a distance because he's too shy to speak to you and, when he does get a chance to speak to you, sort of chokes and turns pink and twists his fingers and makes funny noises and trips over his feet and looks rather a lamb and...."

Mrs. Waddington had risen from her chair like a storm-cloud brooding over a country-side.

"Molly!" she cried. "Who is this young man?"

"Why, nobody of course! Just some one I sort of imagined."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Waddington, relieved. "You spoke as if you knew him."

"What a strange idea!"

"If any young man ever does look at you and make funny noises, you will ignore him."