“Sometimes people can be too intellegent for their own good. Too much thinking could confuse things.”

“People will think what they want to," he said quietly. Never take too much notice of it.”

“Sometimes," Halt continued, "we tend to expect a little too much of Ranger horses. After all, they are only human.”

“Sometimes I'm so devious I confuse myself.”

“But then, in his lifetime, Halt had often ignored what was technically legal. Technicalities didn't appeal to him. All too often, they simply got in the way of doing the right thing.”

“Sometimes, he thought, all you could do was wait.”

“Who's this?" he said, coming across a name he didn't recognize. "Lady Georgina of Sandalhurst? Why are we inviting her? I don't know her. Why are we asking people we don't know?"I know her," Pauline replied. There was a certain steeliness in her voice that Halt would have done well to recognize. "She's my aunt, Bit of an old stick, really, but I have to invite her."You've never mentioned her before," Halt challenged.True. I don't like her very much. As I said, she's a bit of an old stick."Then why are we inviting her?"We're inviting her," Lady Pauline explained, "because Aunt Georgina has spent the last twenty years bemoaning the fact that I was unmarried. 'Poor Pauline!' she'd cry to anyone who'd listen. 'She'll be a lonley old maid! Married to her job! She'll never find a husband to look after her!' It's just too good an opportunity to miss."Halt's eyebrows came together in a frown. There might be a few things that would annoy him more than someone criticizing the woman he loved, but for a moment, he couldn't think of one.Agreed," he said. "And let's sit her with the most boring people possible at the wedding feast."Good thinking," Lady Pauline said. She made a note on another sheet of paper. "I'll make her the first person on the Bores' table."The Bores' table?" Halt said. "I'm not sure I've heard that term."Every wedding has to have a Bores' table," his fiance explained patiently. "We take all the boring, annoying, bombastic people and sit them together. That way they all bore each other and they don't bother the normal people we've asked."Wouldn't it be simpler to just ask the people you like?" Halt askede. "Except Aunt Georgina, of course--there's a good reason to ask her. But why ask others?"It's a family thing," Lady Pauline said, adding a second and third name to the Bores' table as she thought of them. "You have to ask family and every family has its share of annoying bores. It's just organizing a wedding.”