“I was St. Francis of Assisi,” continued Blanche; “we hadn’t got to keep to our right sexes. I kept getting up in the middle of a meal, and throwing out food to the birds; you see, the chief thing that one remembers of St. Francis is that he was fond of the birds. Everyone was so stupid about it, and thought that I was the old man who feeds the sparrows in the Tuileries Gardens. Then Colonel Pentley was the Jolly Miller on the banks of Dee.”

“How on earth did he do that?” asked Bertie van Tahn.

“ ‘He laughed and sang from morn till night,’ ” explained Blanche.

“How dreadful for the rest of you,” said Bertie; “and anyway he wasn’t on the banks of Dee.”

“One had to imagine that,” said Blanche.