vean, one would have thought--but,
after all, I shall have to forgo whatever public confidence depends
on the competitors being unacquainted with me, since two-thirds of
them will come to you from Troy.'

'You are sure?'

'Quite. Has it not struck you, Sir Felix, that Kirris-vean--ideal
spot for a regatta--has in itself neither the boats nor the men for
one?'

'We might fill up with a launch of the lifeboat,' he hazarded.

'If one could only be certain of the weather.'

'And a public tea, and a procession of the school children.'

'Admirable,' I agreed. 'Never fear, we will make up a programme.'

'Oh, and--er--by the way, Bates of the Wheatsheaf came to me this
morning for an Occasional Licence. He proposes to erect a booth in
his back garden. You see no objection?'

'None at all.'

'A most trustworthy man. . . . He could not apply, you see, at our
last Petty Sessions because he did not then know that a regatta was
contemplated; and the 25th will, of course, be too late. But the
licence can be granted under these circumstances by any two
magistrates sitting together; and I would suggest that you and I--'

'Certainly,' said I, and accompanied Sir Felix to the small room that
serves Troy for an occasional courthouse, where we solemnly granted
Bates his licence.

There is a something about Sir Felix that tempts to garrulity, and I
could fill pages here with an account of our preparations for the
Regatta; the daily visits he paid me--always in a fuss, and five
times out of six over some trivial difficulty that had assailed him
in the still watches of the night; the protracted meetings of
Committee in the upper chamber of the lifeboat-house at Kirris-vean.
But these meetings, and the suggestions Sir Felix made, and the votes
we took upon them, are they not recorded in the minute-book of the
First and Last Kirris-vean Regatta? Yes, thus I have to write it,
and with sorrow: there will never be another Regatta in that Arcadian
village.

Sir Felix, good man, started with a fixed idea that a regatta
differed from a Primrose Fete, if at all, then only in being
non-political. He could not get it out of his head that public
speeches were of the essence of the festivity; and when, with all the
tact at my command, I insisted on aquatics, he countered me by
proposing to invite down a lecturer from the Navy League! As he put
it in the heat of argument, 'Weren't eight _Dreadnoughts_ aquatic
enough for anybody?'