umph, and then immediately appeared
to fall backwards off the tree, to which, however, he remained
attached by his long strong legs, like a monkey swung by his tail.
Hanging thus head downwards above the unhelmed Warner, he gravely proceeded
to drop the battered silk cylinder upon his brows. "Every man a king,"
explained the inverted philosopher, "every hat (consequently) a crown.
But this is a crown out of heaven."

And he again attempted the coronation of Warner, who, however, moved away
with great abruptness from the hovering diadem; not seeming, strangely enough,
to wish for his former decoration in its present state.

"Wrong, wrong!" cried the obliging person hilariously.
"Always wear uniform, even if it's shabby uniform!
Ritualists may always be untidy. Go to a dance with soot on
your shirt-front; but go with a shirt-front. Huntsman wears old coat,
but old pink coat. Wear a topper, even if it's got no top.
It's the symbol that counts, old cock. Take your hat,
because it is your hat after all; its nap rubbed all off
by the bark, dears, and its brim not the least bit curled;
but for old sakes' sake it is still, dears, the nobbiest tile
in the world."

Speaking thus, with a wild comfortableness, he settled or smashed
the shapeless silk hat over the face of the disturbed physician,
and fell on his feet among the other men, still talking,
beaming and breathless.

"Why don't they make more games out of wind?" he asked in some excitement.
"Kites are all right, but why should it only be kites? Why, I thought
of three other games for a windy day while I was climbing that tree.
Here's one of them: you take a lot of pepper--"

"I think," interposed Moon, with a sardonic mildness,
"that your games are already sufficiently interesting.
Are you, may I ask, a professional acrobat on a tour,
or a travelling advertisement of Sunny Jim? How and why do you
display all this energy for clearing walls and climbing trees
in our melancholy, but at least rational, suburbs?"

The stranger, so far as so loud a person was capable of it,
appeared to grow confidential.

"Well, it's a trick of my own," he confessed candidly.
"I do it by having two legs."

Arthur Inglewood, who had sunk into the background of this scene of folly,
started and stared at the newcomer with his short-sighted eyes screwed up
and his high colour slightly heightened.

"Why, I believe you're Smith," he cried with his fresh, almost boyish voice;
and t