nursery, at being grown up.

While the servants moved discreetly about, Joan kept up a rattle of
impersonalities, laughing at Cannon's amazing mustache and
Gargantuan furniture, enthusing wildly over Caruso's once-in-a-
century voice, throwing satire at Mrs. Cooper Jekyll's confirmed
belief in her divine right to queen it, and saying things that made
Alice chuckle about the d'Oylys--that apparently ill-matched pair.
She drank a glass of champagne with the air of a connoisseur and
finally, having displayed an excellent appetite, mounted a cigarette
into a long thin mother-of-pearl holder, lighted it and sank with a
sigh into the room's one comfortable chair.

"Gilbert gave me a cigarette holder like that," said Alice.

"Yes? I think this comes from him," said Joan. "A thoughtful
person!"

That Joan was not quite sure from whom she received it annoyed Alice
far more than if she had boasted of it as one of Gilbert's numerous
gifts. She needed no screwing up now to say what she had rather
timidly brought this cool young slip of a thing there to discuss.

"Will you tell me about yourself and Gilbert?" she asked quietly.
There was no need for Joan to act complete composure. She felt it.
"What is there to tell, my dear?"

"I hope there isn't anything--I mean anything that matters. But
perhaps you don't know that people have begun to talk about you, and
I think you owe it to me to be perfectly frank."