reat peace, such as no amount of present-
giving could ever bestow."

"I shouldn't," said Mrs. Thackenbury, though her air of protest sounded a
bit forced; "I should feel rather a worm for doing such a thing."

"You exaggerate the power of upheaval which a worm would be able to bring
into play in the limited time available," said Clovis; "if you put in a
strenuous ten minutes with a really useful fork, the result ought to
suggest the operations of an unusually masterful mole or a badger in a
hurry."

"They might guess I had done it," said Mrs. Thackenbury.

"Of course they would," said Clovis; "that would be half the satisfaction
of the thing, just as you like people at Christmas to know what presents
or cards you've sent them. The thing would be much easier to manage, of
course, when you were on outwardly friendly terms with the object of your
dislike. That greedy little Agnes Blaik, for instance, who thinks of
nothing but her food, it would be quite simple to ask her to a picnic in
some wild woodland spot and lose her just before lunch was served; when
you found her again every morsel of food could have been eaten up."

"It would require no ordinary human strategy to lose Agnes Blaik when
luncheon was imminent: in fact, I don't believe it could be done."

"Then have all the other guests, people whom you dislike, and lose the
luncheon. It could have been sent by accident in the wrong direction."

"It would be a ghastly picnic," said Mrs. Thackenbury.

"For them, but not for you," said Clovis; "you would have had an early
and comforting lunch before you started, and you could improve the
occasion by mentioning in detail the items of the missing banquet--the
lobster Newburg and the egg mayonnaise, and the curry that was to have
been heated in a chafing-dish. Agnes Blaik would be delirious long
before you got to the list of wines, and in the long interval of waiting,
before they had quite abandoned hope of the lunch turning up, you could
induce them to play silly games, such as that idiotic one of 'the Lord
Mayor's dinner-party,' in which every one has to choose the name of a
dish and do something futile when it is called out. In this case they
would probably burst into tears when their dish is mentioned. It would
be a heavenly picnic."

Mrs. Thackenbury was silent for a moment; she was probably making a
mental list of the people she would like to invite to the Duke Humphrey
picnic. Presently she asked: "A