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Mrs. Brookenham had passed half round the room with the glide that looked languid but that was really a remarkable form of activity, and had given a transforming touch, on sofa and chairs, to three or four crushed cushions. It was all with the hanging head of a broken lily. "You're to stay till the twelfth."

"But if I AM kicked out?"

It was as a broken lily that she considered it. "Then go to the Mangers."

"Happy thought! And shall I write?"

His mother raised a little more a window-blind. "No—I will."

"Delicious mummy!" And Harold blew her a kiss.

"Yes, rather"—she corrected herself. "Do write—from Brander. It's the sort of thing for the Mangers. Or even wire."

"Both?" the young man laughed. "Oh you duck!" he cried. "And from where will YOU let them have it?"

"From Pewbury," she replied without wincing. "I'll write on Sunday."

"Good. How d'ye do, Duchess?"—and Harold, before he disappeared, greeted with a rapid concentration of all the shades of familiarity a large high lady, the visitor he had announced, who rose in the doorway with the manner of a person used to arriving on thresholds very much as people arrive at stations—with the expectation of being "met."