And his wife fits all his angles.  She’s a good chap, too.  That’s the way you have to think of her.  They’re a great pair.  She writes, too.  Oh, you’re sure to like them!  They’re going to be out here for months, he says.  He’s going to specialize in women, and he’s come back here where they’ve got the vote and all, to make headquarters.  Lord, but it’s great!  I haven’t had a real talk with anybody since he went away, over a year ago!”

Then, at the sound of the bell, he cried out, “There they are!” and dashed down into the hall ahead of the parlor maid, as eagerly as a schoolboy anticipating a birthday present.

Rose followed more slowly, and by the time she had reached the landing she found him slapping Barry on the back and shaking both hands with Jane, and trying to help both of them out of their wraps at once.

The last thing she could have thought of just then, was of making, for herself, an effective entrance on the scene.  But it worked out rather that way.  The three of them, Rodney and the Lakes, at the foot of the stairs, in the clothes they had been working and traveling in all day, looked up simultaneously and saw Rose, gowned for a treat for Rodney, on the first landing; a wonderful rose-colored Boucher tapestry (guaranteed authentic by Bertie Willis) on the wall behind her for a background, and the carved Gothic newel-post bringing out the whiteness of the hand that rested upon it.  The picture would have won a moment’s silence from anybody.  And Barry and Jane simply gazed at her wide-eyed.

[Illustration:  “Oh, my dear!  I didn’t know!”]

Rodney was the first to speak.  “It’s really the Lakes, Rose.  I couldn’t quite believe it till I saw them.  And the lady on the landing,” he went on, turning to his guests, “is really my wife.  It’s all a little incredible, isn’t it?”

When the greetings were over and they were on the way up-stairs again, he said:  “I told Rose we weren’t going to dress, but she explained she didn’t put on this coronation robe for you, but for a treat for me before I telephoned, and hadn’t time to change back.”

And when Jane cried out, as they entered the drawing room, “Good heavens, Rodney, what a house!” he answered:  “It isn’t ours, thank God!  We rented it for a year in a sort of honeymoon delirium, I guess.  We don’t live up to it, of course.  Nobody could, but the woman who built it.  But we do our damnedest.”

The gaiety in his voice clouded a little as he said it, and his grin, for a moment, had a rueful twist.  But for a moment only.  Then his untempered delight in the possession of his old friends took him again and, with the exception of one or two equally momentary cloud-shadows, lasted all evening.