.

TO PASS THE TIME.
Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime, il faut aimer ce que l'on a.
"Your energy, my dear lady, is not the least of many attributes." Lady Cantourne looked up from her writing-desk with her brightest smile.
Sir John Meredith was standing by the open window, leaning against the jamb thereof with a grace that had lost its youthful repose.

He was looking out, across a sloping lawn, over the Solent, and for that purpose he had caused himself to be clad in a suit of blue serge.

He looked the veteran yachtsman to perfection--he could look anything in its season--but he did his yachting from the shore--by preference from the drawing-room window.
"One must keep up with the times, John," replied the lady, daintily dipping her quill.
"And 'the times' fills its house from roof to cellar with people who behave as if they were in a hotel.

Some of them--say number five on the first floor, number eleven on the second, or some of the atticated relatives--announce at breakfast that they will not be home to lunch.
Another says he cannot possibly return to dinner at half-past seven, and so on.