as I explicitly indicated, that our Mr. Broom should
leave the Manor Farm, they willed merely that Mr. Broom should leave his
house, and the result is that all kinds of Mr. Brooms all over the
country have been giving notice. I heard of another only this morning.
In fact, our Mr. Broom's brother was one of them. It's a very perilous
as well as a useful gift, you see. But we've got the farm, and that's
the main thing."

She smiled the smile of a conqueror.

"But," remarked another of the guests, who had told us that she was
looking for a _pied-a-terre_, "there's a catch somewhere, isn't there?
Don't you see any weak point?"

Our hostess smiled less confidently. "How?" she asked uneasily.

"Well," the guest continued, "suppose.... It couldn't, I mean, be in
better hands. For the moment. But suppose some one else wanted it? Take
care. Willing is a game that two can play at."

"You don't mean----?" our hostess faltered.

"I do, most certainly," the guest replied. "Directly I go away from here
I shall make a list of my most really obstinate, pushful friends to help
me."

"But that would be most unfair," said our hostess.

"No one is fair when hunting the _pied-a-terre_," I reminded her.

The Marble Arch and Peter Magnus

Finding myself (not often in London on the day that comes so mercifully
between the Saturday and Monday) beside the enisled Marble Arch, I spent
half an hour in listening to the astonishing oratory that was going on
there. Although I had not done this for many, many years, there was so
little change in the proceedings that I gained a new impression of
perpetual motion. The same--or to all intents and purposes the
same--leather lungs were still at it, either arraigning the Deity or
commending His blessed benefactions. As invariably of old, a Hindu was
present; but whether he was the Hindu of the Middle Ages or a new Hindu,
I cannot say. One proselytizing Hindu is strangely like another. His
matter was familiar also. The only novelty that I noticed was a little
band of American evangelists (America being so little in need of
spiritual assistance that these have settled in London) in the attire
more or less of the constabulary of New York, the spokesman among whom,
at the moment I joined his audience, was getting into rather deep water
in an effort to fit the kind of halo acceptable to modern evangelicals
on the head of Martin Luther.

As I passed from group to group, with each step a certa