good-natured piece of unselfishness to join
Davies; for he had spoken of the want of a pal, and seemed honestly
to be in need of me. I almost clutched at this consideration. It was
an admirable excuse, when I reached my office that day, for a
resigned study of the Continental Bradshaw, and an order to Carter to
unroll a great creaking wall-map of Germany and find me Flensburg.
The latter labour I might have saved him, but it was good for Carter
to have something to do; and his patient ignorance was amusing. With
most of the map and what it suggested I was tolerably familiar, for I
had not wasted my year in Germany, whatever I had done or not done
since. Its people, history, progress, and future had interested me
intensely, and I had still friends in Dresden and Berlin. Flensburg
recalled the Danish war of '64, and by the time Carter's researches
had ended in success I had forgotten the task set him, and was
wondering whether the prospect of seeing something of that lovely
region of Schleswig-Holstein, _[See Map A]_ as I knew from hearsay
that it was, was at all to be set against such an uncomfortable way
of seeing it, with the season so late, the company so unattractive,
and all the other drawbacks which I counted and treasured as proofs
of my desperate condition, if I _were_ to go. It needed little to
decide me, and I think K--'s arrival from Switzerland, offensively
sunburnt, was the finishing touch. His greeting was 'Hullo,
Carruthers, you here? Thought you had got away long ago. Lucky devil,
though, to be going now, just in time for the best driving and the
early pheasants. The heat's been shocking out there. Carter, bring me
a Bradshaw'--(an extraordinary book, Bradshaw, turned to from habit,
even when least wanted, as men fondle guns and rods in the close
season).

By lunch-time the weight of indecision had been removed, and I found
myself entrusting Carter with a telegram to Davies, P.O., Flensburg.
'Thanks; expect me 9.34 p.m. 26th'; which produced, three hours
later, a reply: 'Delighted; please bring a No. 3 Rippingille
stove'--a perplexing and ominous direction, which somehow chilled me
in spite of its subject matter.

Indeed, my resolution was continually faltering. It faltered when I
turned out my gun in the evening and thought of the grouse it ought
to have accounted for. It faltered again when I contemplated the
miscellaneous list of commissions, sown broadcast through Davies's
letter, to fulfil which