was making an effort to read, but she was not being very successful, and hailed Jack's entrance with evident pleasure.
"Come along," she said; "I sent the dog off, but I can find room for you. Sit here, Jack."
She moved her chair a little aside, and let him pass.
"I can't think why a merciful providence sends us a day like this," she said. "I want to know whom it benefits to have a thick snowfall. Listen at that, too," she added, as a great gust of wind swept round the corner of the house, and made a deep, roaring sound up in the heart of the chimney.
"It makes it all the more creditable in Chesterford and Mrs. Vivian to go to see the drunkards," remarked Jack.
"Oh, but that's no credit," said Dodo. "They like doing it, it gives them real pleasure. I don't see why that should be any better, morally speaking, than sitting here and talking. They are made that way, you and I are made this. We weren't consulted, and we both follow our inclinations. Besides, they will have their reward, for they will have immense appetites at tea."
"And will give us something to talk about now," remarked Jack lazily.
"Don't you like Grantie, Jack?" asked Dodo presently. "She and Ledgers are talking about life and being in my room. I went to get a book from here, and the fire was so nice that I stopped."
"I wish Ledgers wouldn't treat her like a menagerie, and put her through her tricks," said Jack. "I think she is very attractive, but she belongs too much to a class."
"What class?" demanded Dodo.
"Oh, the class that prides itself on not being of any class—the all things to all men class."
"Oh, I belong to that," said Dodo.
"No, you don't," said he. "You are all things to some men, I grant, but not to all."
"Oh, Jack, that's a bad joke," said Dodo, reprovingly.
"It's quite serious all the same," said he.
"I'm all things to the only man to whom it matters that I should be," said Dodo complacently.
Jack felt rather disgusted.
"I wish you would not state things in that cold-blooded way," he said. "Your very frankness to me about it shows you know that it is an effort."
"Yes," she said, "it is an effort sometimes, but I don't think I want to talk about it. You take things too ponderously. Don't be ponderous; it doesn't suit you in the least. Besides, there is nothing to be ponderous about."
Dodo turned in her chair and looked Jack full in the face. Her face had a kind of triumph about it.
"I want to say something more," said Jack.
"Well, I'm magnanimous to-day," said Dodo. "Go on."
"All you are doing," said he gravely, "is to keep up the original illusion he had about you. It is not any good keeping up an illusion, and thinking you're doing your whole duty."
"Jack, that's enough," said Dodo, with a certain finality in her tone. "If you go on, you may make me distrust myself. I do not mean that as a compliment to your powers, but as a confession to a stupid superstitious weakness in myself. I am afraid of omens."
They sat silent a minute or two, until a door at the far end of the hall opened and Miss Grantham came through, with her showman in tow.
"Lord Ledgers and I were boring each other so," said Miss Grantham, "that we came to bore someone else. When you are boring people you may as well do it wholesale. What a pity it is that one hasn't got a tail like a dog, that cannot help wagging if the owner is pleased, and which stops wagging when he isn't."
"I shall certainly buy a tail," said Dodo, with grave consideration. "One or two, in case the first gets out of order. Must you wag it whenever you are pleased, Grantie? Is it to be an honest tail? Suppose you only think you are pleased, when you are not really, what does the tail do then? Oh, it's very complicated."
"The tail shares the same illusions as the dog," said Miss Grantham.
"Jack and I were talking about illusions," said Dodo.
"I'm going to get a quantity of illusions," said Miss Grantham. "In any case, what did you find to say about them?"
"Jack said it was a bad thing to keep an illusion up," said Dodo, broadly.
Miss Grantham was staring pensively at the fire.
"I saw two boys sitting on a gate yesterday," she said, "and they pushed each other off, and each time they both roared with laughter. I'm sure it was an illusion that they were amused. I would go and sit on a gate with pleasure and get my maid to push me off, if I thought it would amuse either of us. Mr. Broxton, would you like me to push you off a gate?"
"Oh, I'm certain that the people with many illusions are the happiest," said Dodo. "Consequently, I wouldn't willingly destroy any illusion anyone held about anything."
"What a lot of anys," said Miss Grantham.
Lord Ledgers was leaning back in his chair with a sense of pleased proprietorship. It really was a very intelligent animal. Jack almost expected him to take a small whip from his pocket and crack it at her. But his next remark, Jack felt, was a good substitute; at any rate, he demanded another performance.
"What about delusions, Miss Grantham?" he said.
"Oh, delusions are chiefly unpleasant illusions," she said. "Madmen have delusions that somebody wants to kill them, or they want to kill somebody, or that King Charles's head isn't really cut off, which would be very unsettling now."
"Grantie, I believe you're talking sheer, arrant nonsense," said Dodo. "It's all your fault, Tommy. When one is asked a question, one has to answer it somehow or other in self-defence. If you asked me about the habits of giraffes I should say something. Edith is the only really honest person I know. She would tell you she hadn't any idea what a giraffe was, so would Chesterford, and you would find him looking up giraffes in the Encyclopædia afterwards."
Lord Ledgers laughed a low, unpleasant laugh.
"A very palpable hit," he murmured.
The remark was inaudible to all but Jack. He felt quite unreasonably angry with him, and got up from his chair.
Dodo saw something had happened, and looked at him inquiringly. Jack did not meet her eye, but whistled to the collie, who flopped down at his feet.
"I really don't know where I should begin if I was going to turn honest," said Miss Grantham. "I don't think I like honest people. They are like little cottages, which children draw, with a door in the middle, and a window at each side, and a chimney in the roof with smoke coming out. Long before you know them well, you are perfectly certain of all that you will find inside them. They haven't got any little surprises, or dark passages, or queer little cupboards under the stairs."
"Do you know the plant called honesty, Grantie?" asked Dodo. "It's a very bright purple, and you can see it a long way off, and it isn't at all nicer when you get close than it looks from a distance."
"Oh, if you speak of someone as an honest man," said Miss Grantham, "it
