It was a nasty thrust, but Tommy, though he felt it, grinned cheerfully.

"_Stung!_" he cried, laying his hand on his heart in an absurd
theatrical gesture. "Your bolt has gone home, my dear fellow. But
experience may take the place of beauty at fifty."

Carron started. He loathed being fifty, he loathed Tommy, he loathed
everything.

Tommy turned to the kitten and talked artless nonsense to it to fill up
the pause that followed, and Lady Kingsmead powdered her nose with a bit
of chamois skin that lived in a silver box full of Fuller's earth under
the _chaise-longue_ pillows.

"Glad Brigit's coming?" asked Tommy, turning with appalling suddenness
to Carron, whose hatred for him increased tenfold as he tried to answer
carelessly.

As he replied, Brigit came in, without a hat, but covered from head to
foot with a rough tweed coat. Her wavy hair was very wet, and her
gloves, as she pulled them off, dripped on the floor. In her pearly pale
cheeks was a lovely pink tinge.

"What a day!" she cried. "I can't kiss you, mother--how d'ye do, Gerald?
Tommy, you angel, come and be drowned in sister's fond embrace!"

They all stared at her. "It's such a jolly rain. I drove myself in the
cart that had gone for Mr. Green. Green came in the brougham, poor dear!
Well--what are you all staring at, souls?"