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The days of the house-party at Shotover were nuuests was to replace the week on lawn andht Tennis and lals came into fashion; even water polo and squash alternated on days too raw forall these days Beverly Plank appeared with unflagging persistence and assiduity, until his fa, round head and patient, delft-blue, Dutch eyes became a matter of course at Shotover, indoors and out

It was not that he was either accepted, tolerated, or endured; he was simply there, and nobody took the trouble to question his all-pervading presence until everybody had become too much habituated to him to think about it at all

The accomplished establishment of Beverly Plank was probably due as ood-teraduate--there are all kinds of theh he had no particular personal tastes to gratify, he illing and able to gratify the tastes of others He did whatever anybody else did, and did it well enough to be a; and as lack of intellectual development never barred anybody from any section of the fashionable world, it seemed fair to infer that he would land where he wanted to, sooner or later

Meanwhile, Mrs Mortimer led him about with the confidence that was her perquisite; and the chances were that in due time he would have house-parties of his own at Black Fells--not the kind he had wisely denied hihbours as the Ferralls to observe, but the sort he desired However, there were s to be accomplished for hireat yacht and his estates and his shooting boxes and the vast graniteCentral Park just north of the new palaces built on the edges of the outer desert where Fifth Avenue fringes the hundreds

Meanwhile, he had become in a radually caood beginning, though not necessarily a pro a huge chestnut--he could still wedge hiular practice to affect the jocular early-bird squire, and drag Plank out of bed And Plank, in no position to be anything but flattered by such sans gêne, laboriously and gratefully splashed through his bath, ed a and apparently aiallops with Mortimer