Magda laughed a little.

“Well, it won’t be the fault of my friends if I don’t!” she returned ruefully.  “Marraine expended a heap of eloquence over my misdeeds this afternoon.”

“Lady Arabella?  I’m glad to hear it.  Though she has about as much chance of producing any permanent result as the gentleman who occupied his leisure time in rolling a stone uphill.”

“Cat!” Magda made a small grimace at her.  “Ah, here’s some tea!” Melrose, known among Magda’s friends as “the perfect butler,” had come noiselessly into the room and was arranging the tea paraphernalia with the reverential precision of one making preparation for some mystic rite.  “Perhaps when you’ve had a cup you’ll feel more amiable—­that is, if I give you lots of sugar.”

“What was the text of Lady Arabella’s homily?” inquired Gillian presently, as she sipped her tea.

“Oh, that boy, Kit Raynham,” replied Magda impatiently.  “It appears I’m blighting his young prospects—­his professional ones, I mean.  Though I don’t quite see why an attack of calf-love for me should wreck his work as an architect!”

“I do—­if he spends his time sketching ‘the Wielitzska’ in half a dozen different poses instead of making plans for a garden city.”

Magda smiled involuntarily.

“Does he do that?” she said.  “But how ridiculous of him!”

“It’s merely indicative of his state of mind,” returned Gillian.  She gazed meditatively into the fire.  “You know, Magda, I think it will mean the end of our friendship when Coppertop reaches years of discretion.”

Coppertop was Gillian’s small son, a young person of seven, who owed his cognomen to the crop of flaming red curls which adorned his round button of a head.

Magda laughed.

“Pouf!  By the time that happens I shall be quite old—­and harmless.”

Gillian shook her head.

“Your type is never harmless, my dear.  Unless you fall in love, you’ll be an unexploded mine till the day of your death.”

“That nearly occurred to-day, by the way,” vouchsafed Magda tranquilly.  “In which case,”—­smiling—­“you’d have been spared any further anxiety on Coppertop’s account.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Gillian, startled.

“I mean that I’ve had an adventure this afternoon.  We got smashed up in the fog.”

“Oh, my dear!  How dreadful!  How did it happen?”

“Something collided with the car and shot us bang into a motor-bus, and then, almost at the same moment, something else charged into us from behind.  So there was a pretty fair mix-up.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before!  Was anyone badly hurt?  And how did you get home?” Gillian’s questions poured out excitedly.

“No, no one was badly hurt.  I got a blow on the head, and fainted.  So a man who’d been inside the bus we ran into performed the rescuing stunt.  His house was close by, and he carried me in there and proceeded to dose me with sal volatile first and tea afterwards.  He wound up by presenting me with an unvarnished summary of his opinion of the likes of me.”