shy, laconic person at first sight, with the manner of one to whom
conversation, of the drawing-room kind, was little more than a series of
doubtful experiments, that seldom or never came off.

Mrs. Flaxman, on the other hand, was a pretty woman of forty, still young
and slender, in spite of two boys at Eton, one of them seventeen, and in
the Eleven; and her talk was as rash and rapid as that of her companion
was the reverse. Which perhaps might be one of the reasons why they were
excellent friends, and always happy in each other's society.

Mr. Manvers overlooked a certain challenge that Mrs. Flaxman had thrown
out, took the tea provided, and merely inquired how long the rebuilding
of the Flaxmans' own house would take. For it appeared that they were
only tenants of Maudeley House--furnished--for a year.

Mrs. Flaxman replied that only the British workman knew. But she looked
upon herself as homeless for two years, and found the prospect as
pleasant as her husband found it annoying.

"As if life was long enough to spend it in one county, and one house
and park! I have shaken all my duties from me like old rags. No more
school-treats, no more bean-feasts, no more hospital committees, for two
whole years! Think of it! Hugh, poor wretch, is still Chairman of the
County Council. That's why we took this place--it is within fifty miles.
He has to motor over occasionally. But I shall make him resign that, next
year. Then we are going for six months to Berlin--that's for music--_my_
show! Then we take a friend's house in British East Africa, where you can
see a lion kill from the front windows, and zebras stub up your kitchen
garden. That's Hugh's show. Then of course there'll be Japan--and by that
time there'll be airships to the North Pole, and we can take it on our