Mr. Beauchamp wrote that my Great-aunt Jane showed the breed I came from. He had been going to tell my mother how I had deserted him, but he was so pleased with Auntie that he would let me off this time. It was signed Harold Beecham.

Billy growled, “It’s from that mug with the beard I suppose.”

Daddy Royal overheard him and chipped in, “Miss Sybylla would get a hundred notes if the young men knew where to find her. If I put a notice on my door that she needed someone to drive her home this evening, the police would have to regulate the rush. If not, the young men of the district would be decaying; and they have aten too much bull beef for that.”

Billy suggested we should go in a cab to see the pavilion exhibits. He was polite and thoughtful, helping me with my dress, and keeping the rain off me with a big new umbrella while we were getting in and out of the cab, but there was a sadness and quietness about him that I have not seen before. I hoped he was not catching a chill.

The rain kept on and on. There wasn’t a hope of a ring event, so we came back to the Royal. The messenger was waiting with another note. Harold Beecham reported that he and Auntie were getting on splendidly. He hoped that I and young Olliver were enjoying ourselves only half as much. If there was anything I would like him to do for me I had only to let him know. The postscript ran, “Ask young Olliver if he will grow a beard for you.”

The messenger said he had to wait for a reply. I was delighted to oblige: “Yes, there is something you can do, thank you very much. Propose to dear Aunt Jane. I should adore you for an uncle, and it is a pity to waste such an avuncular beard.”

I was pleased with the opportunity to use the word avuncular.

“Would you grow a beard for anyone you liked?” I asked Billy Olliver.

“I know what put that into your head,” he snorted, and fell into a deep gloom.

Daddy Royal invited me to lunch and put me on his right hand side and kept up a patter of teasing. Billy sat on the other side of me and had rather a bad time. He seemed unfledged in meeting it after Henry Beauchamp. Tame. The subject of beards came up among the girls of the house, and some wag asked Mine Host if he thought a man ought to grow a beard to please a lady.

“Of course he should. I’m a Methuselah and have a beard already, but if I had the honour, now, say, of escorting Miss Sybylla for a day, I’d grow my hair and train it in a peruke. Billy Olliver, give an account of yourself. Why have you the privilege of sitting where you sit today, when all the upstanding young men of the district would eat their hats to be where you are at this moment?”