manner of speaking--and the rest comes _tout seul_. This cocksureness
is in the atmosphere of the day, just as fainting and curls and an
appealing helplessness were in the atmosphere of an earlier Victorian
period.

Miss Ferriby stood, pen in hand, and laughed at the confusion on the
table in front of her. She was eminently practical, and quite without
that self-consciousness which in a bygone day took the irritating form
of coyness. Major White, with whom she shook hands _en camarade_, gazed
at her solemnly.

"Who are the Haberdashers' Assistants?" he asked.

Miss Ferriby sat down with a grave face. "Oh, it is a splendid
charity," she answered. "Tony will tell you all about it. It is an
association of which the object is to induce people to give up riding
on Saturday afternoons, and to lend their bicycles to haberdashers'
assistants who cannot afford to buy them for themselves. Papa is
patron."

Cornish looked quickly from one to the other. He had always felt that
Major White was not quite of the world in which Joan and be moved. The
major came into it at times, looked around him, and then moved away
again into another world, less energetic, less advanced, less rapid in
its changes. Cornish had never sought to interest his friend in sundry
good works in which Joan, for instance, was interested, and which
formed a delightful topic for conversation at teatime.

"It is so splendid," said Joan, gathering up her papers, "to feel that
one is really doing something."