you not to leave your oilskins behind," suggested Adrian from the floor.

"Oh, hush, dear boy--is that quite nice?" said the excellent woman in a shocked voice--and then changing the subject with rather laboured vivacity she went on:

"Really I wish dear Pam would concentrate more.  She is having so few lessons now that she ought to be giving of her very best.  One would think her mind was entirely distracted.  I told her so, and her reply was _most_ unconvincing--she said if she had twelve times as much to do she would do it twelve times as well!  Most unreasoning."

"I don’t agree with you, my dear Floweret," said Adrian, "I agree with Pam.  If you are in for a fearful grind--well, there you are--you grind; you get acclimatized, so to speak, like people living on the west coast of Africa.  After a bit you thrive on the beastly thing--in fact revel in it. Whereas if you make a snatch at it--well, there’s a hopeless failure."

Good Miss Chance gave a crackling laugh; she was devoted to Adrian, especially when he slapped her on the back and called her the Floweret, or "my good Blossom"--in cheerful allusion to her pretty name.  She plunged into argument with zest therefore.

"The west coast of Africa," she said, "is not nearly so subject to pestilence and dangerous malaria as it used to be.  Advancing science has taught us how to deal with these things--and what has it to do with French exercises! I am sure you cannot be thinking reasonably.  What else can be expected from your position, which is exactly the opposite to what was intended for the use of a sofa."

"I know," said Adrian, "I am aware of that, Miss Chance. But I never was a Conservative.  My opinions might be classified as Republican-Imperialist.  Let me reason with you.  If the legs are on the sofa, and the head is on the floor, blood flows freely to the brain, and it swells with astonishing rapidity.  Result, a vigorous crop of ideas. I’m full of them at this moment--my brain is, that’s to say.  They are sprouting so rapidly that I shall be able to impart to you information on many subjects in a brace of jiffs."

Miss Chance was about to plunge into further depths, when Christobel intervened politely.

"Don’t listen to him, Miss Chance, he is talking the worst kind of piffle--suppose we go to bed.  Addie, get up, your head was never intended for a carpet-cleaner. Come along and say good-night to Mum, she’s gone up because she had a headache."

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