buttonhole at breakfast and called him “Cousin Val,” and by lunch time it was plain “Val,” and now it is “Harry.”  I do call it bad taste, don’t you, Mamma? and she isn’t half so pretty in broad daylight, and I don’t like her at all now.  Only I can’t help laughing at Lady Westaway’s face when “Phyllis” (that is Mrs. Westaway’s name) says anything especially vulgar; Lady Westaways shudders, and takes a huge sniff at her smelling salts.  She keeps them always with her in a long gold-topped bottle, and she has to use them almost every few minutes when Mrs. Westaway is in the room.

The Horse Show was rather nice; it is held in the park fairly close, and most of us strolled there in the morning before lunch to see the judging.  Lord Valmond joined us, I was walking with Lord George Lane (you remember he was one of the Eleven at Nazeby).  I was in a very good temper, Mamma, and we had been laughing at everything we said.  He is quite a nice idiot, but, when Lord Valmond came, of course I talked as stiffly as possibly, and presently Lord George told him that he was singularly backward in copybook maxims, and that there was one he ought to write out and commit to memory, and it began with “Two’s Company,” upon which Lord Valmond stalked on in a rage.

The seats at the show were very hard boards, and the sun made one awfully drowsy; but about half-an-hour before lunch Lord Valmond came up again, and asked me if I should not like to go for a turn.  I thought I had better, so as not to get cramp.  He said he had been afraid he would never get the chance of speaking to me, I was always so surrounded.  I told him I had only come now because of the cramp.  I am quite determined, Mamma, not to unbend to him at all.  I was not once agreeable, or anything but stiff and snubbing, and I am sure he has never been treated like that before, but it is awfully hard work keeping it up all the time, and when we got in to lunch I was quite tired.

[Sidenote:  On the Lake]

There were numbers of people at the show in the afternoon, and all in their best clothes.  Lady Grace Fenton was showing two of her hunters, and she kept shouting to the grooms, and I did not think it was very attractive behaviour.  She takes such strides you would think her muslin dress would split.  I don’t know why it is that so many people in the country are ugly and weather-beaten, and all their clothes hanging wrong.

Except the house party here, and a few from other big places, there was not a pretty person to be seen.  We had a special reserved tent for tea, and Mrs. Westaway seemed to have every man in the place round her, and I heard one man come up and say, “Well, Phyllis, this is a joke to find you in this respectable hole; how do you like solid matrimony, old girl?” and I do think that sounded familiar and rude, don’t you, Mamma? but Mrs. Westaway wasn’t a bit angry.  She calls Billy “Duckie,” and continually pats and caresses him; he does look such a fool, and I should hate to be fingered like that if I were a man, one must feel like a bunch of grapes with the bloom being rubbed off.  Mrs. Westaway kept Lord Valmond with her all the rest of the time at the show, and then took him on the lake while we played croquet.