good. Far better for you than spending your time in stuffy London night clubs.”

“Oh, ah,” I said.

“You will meet some pleasant people, too. I want to introduce you to a Miss Hemmingway and her brother, who have become great friends of mine. I am sure you will like Miss Hemmingway. A nice, quiet girl, so different from so many of the bold girls one meets in London nowadays. Her brother is curate at Chipley-in-the-Glen in Dorsetshire. He tells me they are connected with the Kent Hemmingways. A very good family. She is a charming girl.”

I had a grim foreboding of an awful doom. All this boosting was so unlike Aunt Agatha, who normally is one of the most celebrated right-and-left-hand knockers in London society. I felt a clammy suspicion. And by Jove, I was right.

“Aline Hemmingway,” said Aunt Agatha, “is just the girl I should like to see you marry, Bertie. You ought to be thinking of getting married. Marriage might make something of you. And I could not wish you a better wife than dear Aline. She would be such a good influence in your life.”

“Here, I say!” I chipped in at this juncture, chilled to the marrow.

“Bertie!” said Aunt Agatha, dropping the motherly manner for a bit and giving me the cold eye.

“Yes, but I say....”

“It is young men like you, Bertie, who make the person with the future of the race at heart despair. Cursed with too much money, you fritter away in idle selfishness a life which might have been made useful, helpful and profitable. You do nothing but waste your time on frivolous pleasures. You are simply an anti-social animal, a drone. Bertie, it is imperative that you marry.”

“But, dash it all....”

“Yes! You should be breeding children to....”

“No, really, I say, please!” I said, blushing richly. Aunt Agatha belongs to two or three of these women’s clubs, and she keeps forgetting she isn’t in the smoking-room.

“Bertie,” she resumed, and would no doubt have hauled up her slacks at some length, had we not been interrupted. “Ah, here they are!” she said. “Aline, dear!”

And I perceived a girl and a chappie bearing down on me smiling in a pleased sort of manner.

“I want you to meet my nephew, Bertie 

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