The young man’s ears seemed to droop on his skull.  ‘He’s not dense,’ thought Soames, following him off the premises.

Goya, with his satiric and surpassing precision, his original “line,” and the daring of his light and shade, could have reproduced to admiration the group assembled round Annette’s tea-tray in the inglenook below.  He alone, perhaps, of painters would have done justice to the sunlight filtering through a screen of creeper, to the lovely pallor of brass, the old cut glasses, the thin slices of lemon in pale amber tea; justice to Annette in her black lacey dress; there was something of the fair Spaniard in her beauty, though it lacked the spirituality of that rare type; to Winifred’s grey-haired, corseted solidity; to Soames, of a certain grey and flat-cheeked distinction; to the vivacious Michael Mont, pointed in ear and eye; to Imogen, dark, luscious of glance, growing a little stout; to Prosper Profond, with his expression as who should say, “Well, Mr. Goya, what’s the use of paintin’ this small party?” finally, to Jack Cardigan, with his shining stare and tanned sanguinity betraying the moving principle:  “I’m English, and I live to be fit.”

Curious, by the way, that Imogen, who as a girl had declared solemnly one day at Timothy’s that she would never marry a good man—­they were so dull—­should have married Jack Cardigan, in whom health had so destroyed all traces of original sin, that she might have retired to rest with ten thousand other Englishmen without knowing the difference from the one she had chosen to repose beside.  “Oh!” she would say of him, in her “amusing” way, “Jack keeps himself so fearfully fit; he’s never had a day’s illness in his life.  He went right through the War without a finger-ache.  You really can’t imagine how fit he is!” Indeed, he was so “fit” that he couldn’t see when she was flirting, which was such a comfort in a way.  All the same she was quite fond of him, so far as one could be of a sports-machine, and of the two little Cardigans made after his pattern.  Her eyes just then were comparing him maliciously with Prosper Profond.  There was no “small” sport or game which Monsieur Profond had not played at too, it seemed, from skittles to tarpon-fishing, and worn out every one.  Imogen would sometimes wish that they had worn out Jack, who continued to play at them and talk of them with the simple zeal of a school-girl learning hockey; at the age of Great-uncle Timothy she well knew that Jack would be playing carpet golf in her bedroom, and “wiping somebody’s eye.”

He was telling them now how he had “pipped the pro—­a charmin’ fellow, playin’ a very good game,” at the last hole this morning; and how he had pulled down to Caversham since lunch, and trying to incite Prosper Profond to play him a set of tennis after tea—­do him good—­“keep him fit.

“But what’s the use of keepin’ fit?” said Monsieur Profond.

“Yes, sir,” murmured Michael Mont, “what do you keep fit for?”