Charlie explained the situation to the girl, as she leisurely buttoned him up.

'Oh, let the old lady come,' she said 'I can behave like a lady; don't you worry. I was brought up as one. I'll put on my very best party airs, and she won't complain of her dinner, I give you my word. Does she know Bertie, by the way?'

'Oh, certain to.'

'Very well; I'll be a foreign widow, who met Bertie in Hamburg or somewhere. I speak perfect French and German.'

Charlie weakly acquiesced.

'I'm afraid you don't quite know Aunt Lavinia,' he said; 'she's very, very mid-Victorian!'

'Never mind, I can be early Victorian. I'll be her friend for life before she's been here two hours. Now come along into the house, and I'll tell you what 1 really want you to do for me-or-it is a lovely morning, and 1 don't know whether you like swimming or not, but I do, and I've a lovely little private bathing place nearby.'

Charlie was very much ready, and after the page-boy had been sent to give the chauffeur his instructions, they wandered off, hand in hand, down a little lane to a highly palisaded backwater.

There were two big and comfortable dressing-rooms, one for men and one for women.

'Sometimes we are very respectable and wear bathing costumes and things,' Maudie explained; 'but sometimes, like this morning, for instance, we don't do anything of the sort, and you are just going to undress me, mother naked, and we'll swim about like Adam and Eve.'

It was not the first time Charlie had got into a bath with a cockstand, but it was the first time he had dived in to swim like that. When he turned over to float, the little siren Maudie swam up to him and laughingly tied a dainty handkerchief on to his rampant mast.