vation he would offer to fight me. I
approached him suavely.

"I was wondering," I said, "as it's impossible to strike a match in this
wind, whether you would let me light my pipe from yours."

"It's empty," he growled.

"Take a fill from my pouch," said I.

The mud-turtle loaded his pipe, handed me my pouch without
acknowledgment, stuck his pipe in his breeches pocket, spat again, and,
deliberately turning his back, on me, lounged off to another post on a
remoter and less lunatic-ridden portion of the shore. Again I laughed,
feeling, as the poet did with the daffodils, that one could not but be
gay in such a jocund company.

There are no amenities or urbanities of life in Murglebed to choke the
growth of the Idea. This evening it flourishes so exceedingly that I
think it safe to transplant it in the alien soil of Q 3, The Albany,
where the good Rogers must be leading an idle existence peculiarly
deleterious to his morals.

This gives one furiously to think. One of the responsibilities of
eumoiriety must be the encouragement and development of virtue in my
manservant.

Also in my young friend and secretary, Dale Kynnersley. He is more to me
than Rogers. I may confess that, so long as Rogers is a sober, honest,
me-fearing valet, in my heart of hearts I don't care a hang about
Rogers's morals. But about those of Dale Kynnersley I do. I care a great
deal for his career and happiness. I have a notion that he is erring
after strange goddesses and neglecting the little girl who is in love
with him. He must be delivered. He must marry Maisie Ellerton, and the
two of them must bring lots of capable, clear-eyed Kynnersleys into the
world. I long to be their ghostly godfather.

Then there's Eleanor Faversham--but if I begin to draw up a programme
I shall lose that spontaneity of effort which, I take it, is one of the
chief charms of dealing unto oneself a happy lot and portion. No; my
soul abhors tabulation. It would make even six months' life as jocular
as Bradshaw's Railway Guide or the dietary of a prison. I prefer to look
on what is before me as a high adventure, and with that prospect in view
I propose to jot down my experiences from time to time, so that when I
am wandering, a pale shade by Acheron, young Dale Kynnersley may have
not only documentary evidence wherewith to convince my friends and
relations that my latter actions were not those of a lunatic, but also,
at the same time, an up-to-date version of Jerem