“German middle-class taste,” he commented, “but in this matter we certainly gave them a lead.  I suppose the idea is that childish fancy is dead and that it is only decent to erect some sort of memorial to it.”

The day was growing hotter, and the Park had ceased to seem a desirable place to loiter in.  Yeovil turned his steps homeward, passing on his way the bandstand with its surrounding acreage of tables.  It was now nearly one o’clock, and luncheon parties were beginning to assemble under the awnings of the restaurant.  Lighter refreshments, in the shape of sausages and potato salads, were being carried out by scurrying waiters to the drinkers of lager beer at the small tables.  A park orchestra, in brilliant trappings, had taken the place of the military band.  As Yeovil passed the musicians launched out into the tune which the doctor had truly predicted he would hear to repletion before he had been many days in London; the “National Anthem of the fait accompli.”

CHAPTER V:  L’ART D’ETRE COUSINE

Joan Mardle had reached forty in the leisurely untroubled fashion of a woman who intends to be comely and attractive at fifty.  She cultivated a jovial, almost joyous manner, with a top-dressing of hearty good will and good nature which disarmed strangers and recent acquaintances; on getting to know her better they hastily re-armed themselves.  Some one had once aptly described her as a hedgehog with the protective mimicry of a puffball.  If there was an awkward remark to be made at an inconvenient moment before undesired listeners, Joan invariably made it, and when the occasion did not present itself she was usually capable of creating it.  She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that a dashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in the habit of travelling on his particular highway.  A great-aunt on her mother’s side of the family had married so often that Joan imagined herself justified in claiming cousin-ship with a large circle of disconnected houses, and treating them all on a relationship footing, which theoretical kinship enabled her to exact luncheons and other accommodations under the plea of keeping the lamp of family life aglow.

“I felt I simply had to come to-day,” she chuckled at Yeovil; “I was just dying to see the returned traveller.  Of course, I know perfectly well that neither of you want me, when you haven’t seen each other for so long and must have heaps and heaps to say to one another, but I thought I would risk the odium of being the third person on an occasion when two are company and three are a nuisance.  Wasn’t it brave of me?”

She spoke in full knowledge of the fact that the luncheon party would not in any case have been restricted to Yeovil and his wife, having seen Ronnie arrive in the hall as she was being shown upstairs.

“Ronnie Storre is coming, I believe,” said Cicely, “so you’re not breaking into a tete-a-tete.”