"Why?"
The heir to the barony seemed perfectly clear in his own mind that she ought to do as she was told, but not being gifted in the matter of clothing his thoughts with language, the reasons he gave seemed both vague and inadequate to an independent-minded young woman whose salary, for the time being, was equal to that of the First Lord of the Treasury.
They parted on Grandmamma's doorstep, with a hearty hand-shake, and a reluctant promise on Mary's part to come out to tea on the morrow. The young man walked on air to one of his numerous houses of call, firm in the conviction that he had never enjoyed a luncheon so much in all his born days.
"Ye-es, Agatha, I a-gree with you," said the first Baron Shelmerdine of Potterhanworth at half-past seven that evening, twisting his face in the torment of achieving the conventional without a suspicion of the baroque or the bizarre. "The ve-ry next shirts I order from Hoodlam shall all turn down. Harold Box, I believe—so why not I? Oh, confound it all—that's the third I've ruined."
"Fetch another Wally, and I will tie it for you," said the Suffolk Colthurst superbly.
It was humiliation for a Proconsul, but we are pledged to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
