disgusting and superfluous language, the acquirement of which Kingsmead had used much skill in evading, lay on the table. It lay there, forgotten, after the two ladies had left the room, but Kingsmead was a gentleman. So, later he had sought out his sister and coaxed her into telling him the hair-raising sum to which amounted the "two or three frocks" she had had that summer.

He had also learned that Mr. Yelverton, the Carrons, the Newlyns, and Théo Joyselle were coming that afternoon, and what the real reason was that had made the Frenshaws wire they could not come. It had not at all surprised him to hear that the reason given in the wire was utterly false, for, like other people, Kingsmead was bound by his horizon.

On the whole, his day had been a busy one, and the valuable acquisitions of knowledge that I have mentioned, together with a few scraps of information on stable and garage matters, had brought him quite comfortably up to four o'clock, when, as he idled across the lawn, that rum old carp had caught, and held, his eye.

It was a very warm day in October, a day most unusual in its mellow beauty; soft sunshine lay on the lawn and lent splendour to the not very large Tudor house off to the left.

The air of gentle, self-satisfied decrepitude worn by the old place was for the moment lost, and it looked new, clean-cut and almost gaudy, as it must have done in the distant days when it was young. It was a becoming day for the ancient building, as candle-light is becoming to an old beauty and brings back a fleeting and pathetic air of youth to her still lovely features.

Above, the sky was very blue, and the ruminating silence was broken only by the honk-honk of a distant motor. The carp, impeded in his lethargic progress by the thick stem of a water-lily, had stood still (if a fish can be said to stand) for a century—nearly five minutes—his silly old nose pointing stubbornly at the obstacle.

"It won't move, so you'll have to," observed Kingsmead, wriggling a little nearer, "Oh, I say do buck up, or you'll never get there——"

And the carp, quite as if he understood, did buck up, and slid away into the shadow of the rhododendrons.

Kingsmead rose slowly and picked up his cap. What should he do next? The puppies weren't bad, nor the new under-gardener who swore so awfully at his inferior, nor——

"Hello, Tommy."

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