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It must have been this first price, undoubtedly, that appealed to Sidney Dallam, model for all husbands: to Sidney, who had had as much of an idea of buying in Quicksands as of acquiring a Scotch shooting box. The "Faraday place" had belonged to the middle ages, as time is reckoned in Quicksands, and had lain deserted for years, chiefly on account of its lugubrious and funereal aspect.
Good shopkeepers are not supposed to have any tastes, predilections, or desires of their own, and it was therefore with no little surprise that, after many haphazard attempts, Honora discovered Mr, Dallam to be possessed by one all-absorbing weakness. She had fallen in love, she remarked, with little Sid on the beach, and Sidney Dallam suddenly became transfigured. Was she fond of children?
Sidney Dallam had worn to a polo match had been faithfully described in the public prints, or the dinners which she had given at the Quicksands Club. One of these dinners, Honora learned, had been given in honour of Mr. Trixton Brent. "You ought to know Trixy, Honora," Mrs. Dallam declared; "he'd be crazy about you." Time passed, however, and Mrs.
Dallam had been, to put it politely, fiction. She spent the rest of the afternoon writing letters home, pausing at periods to look out of the window. Occasionally it appeared that her reflections were amusing. At seven o'clock Howard arrived, flushed and tired after his day of rest. "By the way, Honora, I saw Trixy Brent at the Club, and he said you wouldn't go riding with him."
Dallam went so far as to affirm, "if Lula Chandos and Clara Trowbridge and others hadn't been there and seen it too; I shouldn't have believed it." Honora was finding penitence a little difficult. But her heart was kind. "Do sit down, Lily," she begged. "If I've offended you in any way, I'm exceedingly sorry I am, really.
"I'm sure she'd like to have us wouldn't you, Mrs. Spence?" "What a brilliant idea, Trixy!" exclaimed Mrs. Kame. "I should be delighted," said Honora, somewhat weakly. An impulse made her glance toward the veranda, and for a fraction of a second she caught the eye of Lily Dallam, who turned again to Mrs. Chandos. "I say," said Mr. Cuthbert, "I don't play but I hope I may come along."
"I bought it for nothing, my dear," said Mrs. Dallam, but she pinched Honora's arm delightedly. "How wicked of you!" she whispered, "but it serves her right." In the midst of the discussion of clothes and house rents and other people's possessions, interspersed with anecdotes of a kind that was new to Honora, Sidney Dallam appeared at the door and beckoned to her.
"But, Howard," she said, I I wanted you particularly to-night." "I thought you were going to dine with Lily Dallam. She told me you were. Are you alone?" "Mr. Brent is here. He brought over some Banbury people to play bridge. They've gone." "Oh, Brent will amuse you," he replied. "I didn't know you were going to be home, and I've promised these men. I'll come back early."
I tried so hard to get her to come to dinner to-night, and the Trowbridges' and the Barclays'. You've no idea how difficult it is in New York to get any one under two weeks. And so we've got just ourselves." Honora was on the point of declaring, politely, that she was very glad, when Lily Dallam asked her how she liked the brougham. "It's the image of Mrs.
The Third Avenue Elevated, "so handy for Sid," roared across the gap scarcely a block away; and just as the door was opened the tightest of little blue broughams, pulled by a huge chestnut horse and driven by the tiniest of grooms in top boots, drew up at the curb. And out of it burst a resplendent lady Mrs. Dallam. "Oh, it's you, Honora," she cried. "Am I late? I'm so sorry.
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