one he never was. His hostess had changed suddenly, as
far as he was concerned, from the desirable type that lets her guests do
nothing in the way that best pleases them, to the sort that drags them
over the ground like so many harrows. She showed him the herb garden and
the greenhouses, the village church, some water-colour sketches that her
sister had done in Corsica, and the place where it was hoped that celery
would grow later in the year.

He was shown all the Aylesbury ducklings and the row of wooden hives
where there would have been bees if there had not been bee disease. He
was also taken to the end of a long lane and shown a distant mound
whereon local tradition reported that the Danes had once pitched a camp.
And when his hostess had to desert him temporarily for other duties he
would find Evelyn walking solemnly by his side. Evelyn was fourteen and
talked chiefly about good and evil, and of how much one might accomplish
in the way of regenerating the world if one was thoroughly determined to
do one's utmost. It was generally rather a relief when she was displaced
by Jack, who was nine years old, and talked exclusively about the Balkan
War without throwing any fresh light on its political or military
history. The German governess told Lanner more about Schiller than he
had ever heard in his life about any one person; it was perhaps his own
fault for having told her that he was not interested in Goethe. When the
governess went off picket duty the hostess was again on hand with a not-
to-be-gainsaid invitation to visit the cottage of an old woman who
remembered Charles James Fox; the woman had been dead for two or three
years, but the cottage was still there. Lanner was called back to town
earlier than he had originally intended.

Hugo did not bring off his affair with Betty Coulterneb. Whether she
refused him or whether, as was more generally supposed, he did not get a
chance of saying three consecutive words, has never been exactly
ascertained. Anyhow, she is still the jolly Coulterneb girl.

The buzzards successfully reared two young ones, which were shot by a
local hairdresser.

THE STAKE

"Ronnie is a great trial to me," said Mrs. Attray plaintively. "Only
eighteen years old last February and already a confirmed gambler. I am
sure I don't know where he inherits it from; his father never touched
cards, and you know how little I play--a game of bridge on Wednesday
afternoons in the wi