CHAPTER III.
Mr.Lanley was ruffled as he left his daughter's drawing-room.
"As if I had wanted her to marry at eighteen," he said to himself; and he took his hat crossly from Pringle and set it hard on his head at the slight angle which he preferred.

Then reflecting that Pringle was not in any way involved, he unbent slightly, and said something that sounded like: "Haryer, Pringle ?" Pringle, despite his stalwart masculine appearance, had in speaking a surprisingly high, squeaky voice.
"I keep my health, thank you, sir," he said.

"Anna has been somewhat ailing." Anna was his wife, to whom he usually referred as "Mrs.
Pringle"; but he made an exception in speaking to Mr.Lanley, for she had once been the Lanleys' kitchen-maid.

"Your car, sir ?" No, Mr.Lanley was walking--walking, indeed, more quickly than usual under the stimulus of annoyance.
Nothing had ever happened that made him suffer as he had suffered through his daughter's divorce.

Divorce was one of the modern ideas which he had imagined he had accepted.