"Adrian is bringing one with him. He's coming down to dine and stay the
night. He said he had an engagement, but I told him it was rubbish, and
he's coming."

Barbara had a despotic way with her men friends, especially with Adrian
and Jaffery, who, each after his kind, paid her very pretty homage.

"And now, I've got a hundred things to do, so you must excuse me," said
Barbara--for all the world as if I had invited her into my library and
was detaining her against her will.

My reply was smilingly ironical. She disappeared. I returned to Hafiz.
Soon a bumble-bee, a great fellow splendid in gold and black and
crimson, blundered into the room and immediately made furious racket
against a window pane. Now I can't concentrate my mind on serious
things, if there's a bumble-bee buzzing about. So I had to get up and
devote ten minutes to persuading the dunderhead to leave the glass and
establish himself firmly on the piece of paper that would waft him into
the open air and sunlight. When I lost sight of him in the glad greenery
I again came back to my work. But two minutes afterwards my little seven
year old daughter, rather the worse for amateur gardening, and holding a
cage of white mice in her hand, appeared on the threshold, smiled at me
with refreshing absence of apology, darted in, dumped the white mice on
an open volume of my precious Turner Macan's edition of Firdusi, and
clambering into my lap and seizing pencil and paper, instantly ordained
my participation in her favourite game of "head, body and legs."

An hour afterwards a radiant angel of a nurse claimed her for purposes
of ablution. I once more returned to Hafiz. Then Barbara put her head in
at the door.