up the shutters. I forget exactly how the thing ran. It
is just so with Dalrymple. He comes into my room in the City and
warms himself, though no fire is needed to fan his enthusiasm for
destruction. The Bolsheviks are peaceable Sunday folk compared with
him. A Nihilist on a war footing would be considered Quaker-like in
his symptoms.

Dalrymple is neck or nothing. He is a whole-hogger even to the most
indigestible bit of crackling.

"What we want is a fresh start," he said. "Then you could begin anew
and everybody would have a chance. Burn things, blow them up, leave
nothing; then we should see something. Your whole scheme is faulty.
Your Underground--" Dalrymple has an irritating habit of fathering
things on me, which is unfair, for, as regards the Tubes, for
instance, I am sorry to say I have not even a share, and often not
as much as a strap.

"But the Underground is only a bit overcrowded," I ventured to say.
"It can't help that, you know."

"It is all wrong," said Dalrymple. "The entire gadget is defective.
Look at France, look at America, look at Germany and Russia and the
Jugo-Slavs."

It was rather breathless work looking at all these nations and
peoples, but I did my best. Dalrymple is particularly strong when it
is a question of the Jugo-Slavs, and he always gave me the idea that
he spent his Saturday afternoons enunciating chatty pleasantries in
Trafalgar Square and on Tower Hill.

But--you might just see the finish--Dalrymple was not doing anything
of the sort the afternoon that I was out house-hunting. Yes, it is
true. You will scarcely credit the fact that I found any difficulty
in tracking down an eligible villa, but that is the case.

The quest took me to a pleasant semi-rural neighbourhood where
there was room for gardens with the borders edged with the nice soft
yellow-tinted box, and rose walks, and dainty little arbours, and
fandangled appurtenances which amateur gardeners love with perfect
justification.

And there was Dalrymple. I won't deceive you. I recognised him on
the other side of a low oak fence. He was wearing an old hat of the
texture of the bit of headgear which the man who impersonates Napoleon
at the music-hall doubles up and plays tricks with, only Dalrymple's
hat had obviously been white and was now going green and other colours
with wear and tear.

And wherever Dalrymple went a small cherub in a holland frock went
too. The cherub would be about five. Dalrymple was fash