Lena Luddleford was not included among the guests, having previously
committed herself to another invitation. At the opening day of a cricket
festival, however, she ran across Lady Prowche, who had motored over from
the other side of the county. She wore the air of one who is not
interested in cricket and not particularly interested in life. She shook
hands limply with Lena, and remarked that it was a beastly day.
"The party, how has it gone off?" asked Lena quickly.
"Don't speak of it!" was the tragical answer; "why do I always have such
rotten luck?"
"But what has happened?"
"It has been awful. Hyaenas could not have behaved with greater
savagery. Sir Richard said so, and he has been in countries where hyaenas
live, so he ought to know. They actually came to blows!"
"Blows?"
"Blows and curses. It really might have been a scene from one of
Hogarth's pictures. I never felt so humiliated in my life. What the
servants must have thought!"
"But who were the offenders?"
"Oh, naturally the very two that we took all the trouble about."
"I thought they agreed on every subject that one could violently disagree
about--religion, politics, vivisection, the Derby decision, the Falconer
Report; what else was there left to quarrel about?"
"My dear, we were fools not to have thought of it.
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