stood together watching the professor shaping at his ball at the other end of the lawn, "by an author of the same surname as you, Mr. Garnet. Is he a relation of yours?" 

 "My name is Jeremy, Miss Derrick." 

 "Oh, you wrote it?" She turned a little pink. "Then you must have—oh, nothing." 

 "I couldn't help it, I'm afraid." 

 "Did you know what I was going to say?" 

 "I guessed. You were going to say that I must have heard your criticisms in the train. You were very lenient, I thought." 

 "I didn't like your heroine." 

 "No. What is a 'creature,' Miss Derrick?" 

 "Pamela in your book is a 'creature,'" she replied unsatisfactorily. 

 Shortly after this the game came somehow to an end. I do not understand the intricacies of croquet. But Phyllis did something brilliant and remarkable with the balls, and we adjourned for tea. The sun was setting as I left to return to the farm, with Aunt Elizabeth stored neatly in a basket in my hand. The air was deliciously cool, and full of that strange quiet which follows soothingly on the skirts of a broiling midsummer afternoon. Far away, seeming to come from another world, a sheep-bell tinkled, deepening the silence. Alone in a sky of the palest blue there gleamed a small, bright star. 

 I addressed this star. 

 "She was certainly very nice to me. Very nice indeed." The star said nothing. 

 "On the other hand, I take it that, having had a decent up-bringing, she would have been equally polite to any other man whom she had happened to meet at her father's house. Moreover, I don't feel altogether easy in my mind about that naval chap. I fear the worst." 

 The star winked. 

 "He calls her Phyllis," I said. 

 "Charawk!" chuckled Aunt Elizabeth from her basket, in that beastly cynical, satirical way which has made her so disliked by all right-thinking people. 

 

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