"Oh, my dear, I'm dying for a drink!" cried Miss Blackall, flinging
herself in an attitude more easy than graceful into an armchair.

Bella opened the chiffonier and produced glasses and a spirit stand.

"Saves the trouble of ringing for the servant," she said archly to
Meynell.

Chetwynd could fairly have groaned; and when his wife put the climax
upon everything by drinking out of her sister's glass he could
contain himself no longer. "I never saw you touch spirits before," he
said, determined that his friend should know that his wife was an
abstemious woman.

"Ah," she said lightly, "there are lots of things you never saw me
do, Jack, which I am capable of, all the same." Whereupon Saidie
burst out laughing as at some prodigious joke.

"Good for you, Bella! All right, dear! I'm not one to tell tales out
of school."

"Are you a married man, sir, may I ask?"

Doss put his thumbs under his arm-pits and looked scrutinisingly into
Meynell's face. "I should say not."

"No, I'm a bachelor, and likely to continue one."

"Well," remarked Mrs. Doss sentimentally, "I don't know nothing