alert with their fingers on the triggers of their umbrellas.

But no rain fell. Rain cannot fall in this book of fine weather.

The draught that intruded into the flat ruffled the neat hair of five
persons, Miss Ford herself, Lady Arabel Higgins, Miss Ivy MacBee, Mr.
Bernard Tovey, and Mr. Darnby Frere.

Miss MacBee always seemed to be seated on tenterhooks, even in the most
comfortable of chairs. Her Spartan spine never consented graciously to
the curves of cushions. She had smooth padded hair and smooth padded
manners, and her eyes were magnified by thick pince-nez to a cow-like
size. Most people, especially most women, were instinctively sorry for
her, because she always looked a little clever and very uncomfortable.

Mr. Bernard Tovey was a blunt-nosed beaming person. He leaned forward
abruptly whenever he spoke, thereby swinging a lock of hair into his
right eye. He agreed so heartily with everything that was said that
people who addressed him were left with the happy impression that they
had said something Rather Good. This habit, combined with the fact that
he never launched an independent remark, had given him the reputation of
being one of the best talkers in Kensington.

Mr. Darnby Frere was the editor of an advanced religious paper called _I
Wonder_, but he never wondered really. He knew almost everything, and
therefore, while despising the public for knowing so little, he
encouraged it to continue wondering, so that he might continue despising
and instructing it.

Now it was an almost unprecedented thing for two members of the small