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nice manners, for one thing,” she retorted, surprised to find herself speaking like this.
    She was no more surprised than her companion, however. He gave her another quick glance an amused one and said,
    “What’s the sting in that? Think I’m being fresh?”
    “I wasn’t really thinking about you at all,’ replied Leslie, with obvious untruth. “Except to wonder, rather apprehensively, about your impact on my father.”
    “Put that in plain English, would you? Do I turn left here?”
    “No. Straight on. And, in plain English, I mean that my father never heard of you until to-day, so that your very existence was something of a sho-surprise. You would do well to remember that and go rather tactfully.”
    “Implying that I have not exercised tact with you?”
    Leslie, who had never before been subjected to the gale of good-humoured candour which seemed to be blowing upon her at the moment, was silent.
    Whereat Reid Carthay laughed, put out a hand and, to her inexpressible annoyance, patted her as though she had been a kitten, and said,
    “You shouldn’t take offence so easily. Is this the drive?”
    “Yes.” She quickly withdrew her hand from under the strong, warm, brown one which had touched her so easily, and, as they swept round the curve of the drive and came to a stop in front of the house. Alma appeared in the open doorway.
    An inquisitive and friendly child by nature, she ran down the steps, and addressed the newcomer with all the curiosity and interest that had been lacking in Leslie.
    “Hello! Are you Reid Carthay?”
    “I am.” He leant back, smiling a little, with one hand still resting on the wheel of the ear. “Any objections?”
    “Oh, no. But I thought you were going to be old.”
    “There are times when I think I am.”
    “But I meant really old,” explained the literal Alma. “You don’t look more than forty.”
    Alma led the way into the drawing-room, where the family was present in force.
    Most men, Leslie supposed, would have been slightly intimidated by the spectacle of such a united front, and she would have made the introductions in the friendliest manner possible. But Reid Carthay showed no signs of being put out, much less intimidated, and, having greeted Mrs. Greeve pleasantly and taken in the rest in one comprehensive glance, he shook hands with his host, and said,
    “Fortunately, I stopped to ask Leslie the way, so there wasn’t much difficulty in finding the place.”
    Leslie, as they all knew, was the rather reserved one of the family, and to have this man talking as though he and she were old acquaintances made Morley at least glance at her with interest.
    “Mr. Carthay,” Leslie explained, with the very slightest emphasis on the name, “overtook me just as I left Jenkins’ Farm. And, as he asked me the way, of course I guessed who he was.”
    “Quite, quite,” said her father, anxious to monopolize the visitor himself. “Sit down, Carthay, sit down. This is a sad business about poor old Tabitha.”
    Leslie stole another glance at their visitor. He didn’t look a sponger, she reflected. Though of course that cool air of self-confidence might well be part of his stock-in-trade.
    A little more critically, Leslie eyed his admirably tailored dark suit, his unobtrusive but expensive wrist-watch, and recalled the undoubted luxury of the car in which he had given her a lift.
    Great-Aunt Tabitha or no, he did remarkably well out of something. Or someone.
    He was talking to her mother now, answering the random, conventional questions which one does ask of a stranger who arrives unexpectedly, and seeing him like that, in profile, Leslie was uncomfortably aware of the firmness, even obstinacy, of his jaw and the hard line of his cheek.
    He was not just an ordinary sponger, she decided suddenly. Not anything on a small scale. He might be a great rogue or he might be a force for good. But whatever his line, he was big and forceful and probably not a little ruthless. Cranley