to marry a girl of that sort without letting her know what he was bringing on her. If they don't clear off soon there'll be a rumpus."

"You never call me 'Drumshambo' when you speak to them. I could see the old woman noticed it."

(6 'Of course. I wish I had called you 'Poggles.' I was very near inviting Hubert and Sheila only-but-" Lady Drumshambo did not think it necessary to finish her sentence; she merely smiled as though defying principalities and powers, or Mrs. Burscough, to make her behave in any manner short of excellence.

"I'm glad you didn't. I like my rubber, and they do understand whist "-it was evident he did not mean Sheila and her husband.

CHAPTER VI

SIX OF HEARTS ?

LADY DRUMSHAMBO was quite aware that in asking six people to dinner from one house she was showing unbridled hospitality; but old Mrs. Burscough (who strongly disapproved of Irish hospitality) would have been in high dudgeon had her son and his bride been invited alone, without his parents and sisters, and of that also Lady Drumshambo was fully conscious. Besides, she was really an amiable woman, and while remembering her husband's whist-table, was willing to let Eleanor and Henrietta see the wedding dress under favourable conditions.

"Nothing but the omnibus will hold them all," she remarked to her husband.

"Oh the big carriage will-better send it. It'll be a tightish fit, but Hubert can go on the box." So it was the big carriage (that the Duchess lost her teeth in) and Henrietta was delighted. She had never been in it before, and felt quite grateful to Sheila.

"I shall go," she had observed, "in my puce. You being in white, Sheila, colours will set you off better."

"You will go," said my grandmother sharply, "in in your dove-colour."

And of course she did. It was not a pretty dress and it was not well cut or wellmade poor Henrietta had only the will to dress well, and had no taste or knowledge to counteract the lack of it in the village dressmaker. But nothing, not even her silliness of expression, could alter the fact that she was really pretty herself, and perhaps her silliness made her look all the younger

have passed for four and twenty.

she might

To do her justice, she was neither cross nor jealous; and when Sheila came down, in her ivory-white brocaded silk, covered with soft Limerick lace, with little knots of orange blossoms among dark, glossy green leaves here and there, she cried out quite rapturously, "Oh, dear! How sweet-how perfectly lovely you look!"

Hubert was clearly of the same opinion, and even old Mr. Burscough rubbed his long cold hands and nodded and gave a chuckle that was so clearly appreciative that his wife was out of all patience with him.

Then the door opened, and the butler announced my grandmother, etc.

There were five gentlemen and three ladies in the room when all the Burscoughs walked into it, and the four gentlemen and two ladies who had not seen the bride before all perceived their host's triumphant look around meant "Well! what did I say? ? "

"Quite right," the County Member's wife responded, not in words, of course, but by a little nod. The gentlemen did not nod, but they were strongly of her (and Lord Drumshambo's) opinion; her husband, Sir Bolt Fencey, did not, however, as she did, admire the bridegroom, too. Even before dinner was announced, Lord Drumshambo, who seemed to make his countrywoman's beauty a personal matter, got them in a corner and said impatiently:

Well?"

She's all you promised," declared Sir Bolt. "But what were your young Irish fellows about to let her be carried off by this English parson?"

"A very handsome couple," said Lady Fencey.