-go-round. Afterwards he
explained, when we were making up for lost time along the big
vlei.

'It was that night when we got to Goring,' he reminded me, 'when
we went down to Henley in that double-sculler at the end of our
first summer term 1888, the first week in July. There was a
village fair on that night, and we rode round on the horses, ever
so many pennyworths. That was the tune I remembered best of all
the tunes that the steam-organ played. Don't you remember?' And
strange to say, I did.

He played the game with the organizer, rapt though he was by his
memory of the steam-organ, I will say that much for him. He took
the trouble to go all the way up to Salisbury, and to beg him to
have him excused. And he was successful. I don't quite know what
excuse he gave. It was scarcely likely to be so crude as the
excuse I guessed at, 'I want to marry a wife, and therefore I
cannot go.' He unbosomed himself to me engagingly when he came
back from Salisbury. He appealed to my compassionate sympathy.

'Just fancy! Forty-five and no real home!' he said, 'And here
I've come on pilgrimage, and found just what I've unconsciously
craved youth and beauty up-to-date, not this date but the date of
my own unforgotten youth 1888 in lavender, so to speak.'

I wished him luck in his wooing of Miss Kent. If Mrs. Kent had
been a widow, I should have thought her much more suitable. He
gave the bridle-reins a shake, and rode away on an old salted
horse he had bought, walking had grown much too slow for him.

He won Joan Kent, and fixed it up with her late-Victorian parents
to their mutual content.

The wedding date is chosen already it is June 20th a day hallowed
enough, having twice been Jubilee Day. I think Vine would have
preferred May 24th as having been Victoria Day. But Joan objected
to her wedding taking place in Our Lady's May month.

DIVINATION

I have a friend who lives some miles away, among fantastic rocks
and crimson-flowered Kaffir trees. I was over at his homestead
one day in Christmas week last year and found that he was absent.
He was sleeping at a trading-station to east, the boys said, and
would not be back for a day or so. But he had left word with them
to give me supper should I come. So I had time to notice a
change.

Three or four very cool and fresh water-colors adorned his walls.
They were pinned up there under a trophy of harness. Under each
oblong of paper was a title in old English characters