we went into the garden again and ran races, and Mrs. Red House
held all our spectacles for us and cheered us on. She said she was the
Patent Automatic Cheering Winning-post. We do like her.

Lunch was the glorious end of the Morden House Antiquarian Society and
Field Club's Field Day. But after lunch was the beginning of a real
adventure such as real antiquarians hardly ever get. This will be
unrolled later. I will finish with some French out of a newspaper.
Albert's uncle told it me, so I know it is right. Any of your own
grown-ups will tell you what it means.

_Au prochain numero je vous promets des emotions._

* * * * *

PS.--In case your grown-ups can't be bothered, "_emotions_" mean
sensation, I believe.

_THE INTREPID EXPLORER AND HIS LIEUTENANT_

WE had spectacles to play antiquaries in, and the rims were vaselined to
prevent rust, and it came off on our faces with other kinds of dirt, and
when the antiquary game was over, Mrs. Red House helped us to wash it
off with all the thoroughness of aunts, and far more gentleness.

Then, clean and with our hairs brushed, we were led from the bath-room
to the banqueting hall or dining-room.

It is a very beautiful house. The girls thought it was bare, but Oswald
likes bareness because it leaves more room for games. All the furniture
was of agreeable shapes and colours, and so were all the things on the
table--glasses and dishes and everything. Oswald politely said how nice
everything was.

The lunch was a blissful dream of perfect A.1.-ness. Tongue, and nuts,
and apples, and oranges, and candied fruits, and ginger-wine in tiny
glasses that Noel said were fairy goblets. Everybody drank everybody
else's health--and Noel told Mrs. Red House just how lovely she was,
and he would have paper and pencil and write her a poem for her very
own. I will not put it in here, because Mr. Red House is an author
himself, and he might want to use it in some of his books. And the
writer of these pages has been taught to think of others, and besides I
expect you are jolly well sick of Noel's poetry.

[Illustration: THE LUNCH WAS A BLISSFUL DREAM OF A.1.-NESS.]

There was no restrainingness about that lunch. As far as a married lady
can possibly be a regular brick, Mrs. Red House is one. And Mr. Red
House is not half bad, and knows how to talk about interesting things
like sieges, and cricket, and foreign postage stamps.

Even poets think