a new companion, new so far as this narrative goes, but in reality an old friend and a protegee.  This was a slight young woman in dark gray, and in no way notable but for a load of dull red hair, of which the shape somehow gave her pale face that triangular, almost peaked, appearance which was given by the lowering headdress and deep rich ruff of the Elizabethan beauties.  Her surname seemed to be Gray, and Miss Hunt called her Mary, in that indescribable tone applied to a dependent who has practically become a friend.  She wore a small silver cross on her very business-like gray clothes, and was the only member of the party who went to church.  Last, but the reverse of least, there was Diana Duke, studying the newcomer with eyes of steel, and listening carefully to every idiotic word he said.  As for Mrs. Duke, she smiled up at him, but never dreamed of listening to him.  She had never really listened to any one in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Duke was pleased with her new guest’s concentration of courtesy upon herself; for no one ever spoke seriously to her any more than she listened seriously to any one.  And she almost beamed as the stranger, with yet wider and almost whirling gestures of explanation with his huge hat and bag, apologized for having entered by the wall instead of the front door.  He was understood to put it down to an unfortunate family tradition of neatness and care of his clothes.

“My mother was rather strict about it, to tell the truth,” he said, lowering his voice, to Mrs. Duke.  “She never liked me to lose my cap at school.  And when a man’s been taught to be tidy and neat it sticks to him.”

Mrs. Duke weakly gasped that she was sure he must have had a good mother; but her niece seemed inclined to probe the matter further.

“You’ve got a funny idea of neatness,” she said, “if it’s jumping garden walls and clambering up garden trees.  A man can’t very well climb a tree tidily.”

“He can clear a wall neatly,” said Michael Moon; “I saw him do it.”

Smith seemed to be regarding the girl with genuine astonishment.  “My dear young lady,” he said, “I was tidying the tree.  You don’t want last year’s hats there, do you, any more than last year’s leaves?  The wind takes off the leaves, but it couldn’t manage the hat; that wind, I suppose, has tidied whole forests to-day.  Rum idea this is, that tidiness is a timid, quiet sort of thing; why, tidiness is a toil for giants.  You can’t tidy anything without untidying yourself; just look at my trousers.  Don’t you know that?  Haven’t you ever had a spring cleaning?”

“Oh yes, sir,” said Mrs. Duke, almost eagerly.  “You will find everything of that sort quite nice.”  For the first time she had heard two words that she could understand.

Miss Diana Duke seemed to be studying the stranger with a sort of spasm of calculation; then her black eyes snapped with decision, and she said that he could have a particular bedroom on the top floor if he liked:  and the silent and sensitive Inglewood, who had been on the rack through these cross-purposes, eagerly offered to show him up to the room.  Smith went up the stairs four at a time, and when he bumped his head against the ultimate ceiling, Inglewood had an odd sensation that the tall house was much shorter than it used to be.