careful. But they don't get[Pg 16] shocked at what they do or say themselves. Whatever they do themselves they know must be all right, and they take hands and sing 'Rule Britannia.' They are the enfant terrible of Europe. They put their big stupid feet into everything and when they have spoiled it all, so that nobody cares for it any longer, they ask why people are vexed with them! And then they go and play golf. I am getting very English myself. Except when I talk fast you would not know I was not English." [Pg 16] Esther, since her camomile tea was quite spoiled, took a cigarette instead, which she liked better. "Well, darling, you know every now and then you are a shade foreign," she said. "Especially when you talk about nationalities. As a nation I believe you positively loathe us. But that doesn't matter. It's he and she who matter, not they." Bertie had sat up at the mention of golf and was talking to Tommy. "Yes, I won at the seventeenth," he said. "I took it in three. Two smacks and one put." "Gosh," said Tommy. "I wish I hadn't mentioned that damned game," said Nadine very distinctly. "You will talk about golf now till morning." "Yes, but you needn't. Go on about Daddy," said Esther. "Certainly he is more interesting than golf, and gets into just as many holes. He is a creature of Nature. He falls in love every year, when the hounds of spring—" [Pg 17] [Pg 17] A chorus interrupted her. "Are on winter's traces, the mother of months—" "Oh, ripping!" said Bertie. "Yes. How chic to have written that and to have lived at Putney," said Nadine. "Mama once took me to see Mr. Swinburne and told me to kiss his hand as soon as ever I got into the room. So when we got in, there was one little old man there, and I kissed his hand; but it was not Mr. Swinburne at all, but somebody quite different." Again the door opened, and a woman entered, tall, beautiful, vital. There
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