He beamed on Nora, whom he had always regarded as much too pretty a girl to be what he secretly called a ‘frozy companion’ and sent a quick inquiring glance at Miss Pringle, whom he vaguely remembered to have seen somewhere in Tunbridge Wells.  But then Tunbridge Wells was filled with frumps.  Oh, yes.  He remembered now.  She was usually to be seen leading a pair of Poms on a leash.

“You see, I didn’t know if you’d be staying on here,” he went on, retaining Nora’s hand, “and I wanted to catch you.  I’m off in a day or two myself.”

“Won’t you sit down?  Mr. Hornby—­Miss Pringle.”

“How d’you do?”

Mr. Hornby’s glance skimmed lightly over Miss Pringle’s surface and returned at once to Nora’s more pleasing face.

“Everything go off O. K.?” he inquired genially.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Funeral, I mean.  Mother went.  Regular outing for her.”

Miss Pringle stiffened visibly in her chair and began to study the pattern in the rug at her feet with an absorbed interest.  Nora was conscious of a wild desire to laugh, but with a heroic effort succeeded in keeping her face straight out of deference to her elderly friend.

“Really?” she said, in a faint voice.

“Oh, yes,” went on young Hornby with unabated cheerfulness.  “You see, mother’s getting on.  I’m the child of her old age—­Benjamin, don’t you know.  Benjamin and Sarah, you know,” he explained, apparently for the benefit of Miss Pringle, as he pointedly turned to address this final remark to her.

“I understand perfectly,” said Miss Pringle icily, “but it wasn’t Sarah.”

“Wasn’t it?  When one of her old friends dies,” he went on to Nora, “mother always goes to the funeral and says to herself:  ’Well, I’ve seen her out, anyhow!’ Then she comes back and eats muffins for tea.  She always eats muffins after she’s been to a funeral.”

“The maid said you wanted to see me about something in particular,” Nora gently reminded him.

“That’s right, I was forgetting.”

He wheeled suddenly once more on Miss Pringle, who had arrived at that stage in her study of the rug when she was carefully tracing out the pattern with the point of her umbrella.

“If Sarah wasn’t Benjamin’s mother, whose mother was she?”

“If you want to know, I recommend you to read your Bible,” retorted that lady with something approaching heat.

Mr. Hornby slapped his knee.  “I thought it was a stumper,” he remarked with evident satisfaction.

“The fact is, I’m going to Canada and mother told me you had a brother or something out there.”

“A brother, not a something,” said Nora, with a smile.

“And she said, perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving me a letter to him.”

“I will with pleasure.  But I’m afraid he won’t be much use to you.  He’s a farmer and he lives miles away from anywhere.”

“But I’m going in for farming.”