t hare was trying what it felt like to be
in two parishes at once, for he jumped from behind that stone and
started for the Thurrock--that's right, isn't it?"

"Drews Thurrock? Yes."

"It was unfortunately just then that the collar broke. I whistled until
I felt undignified, and then went straight for the said Thurrock, rather
dreading that I should find Achilles awaiting applause for an
achievement in--in leporicide, I suppose...."

"I'm sure you didn't."

"I did not. So I waited a little, and was thinking what I had better do
next, when the shot came. You can almost see the place from this
window." He got up from his chair, standing exactly where he had stood
when his sister made his hand point out Arthur's Bridge in blind show.
He made a certain amount of pretence that he could see; and, indeed,
seemed to do so. No stranger to the circumstances could have detected
it. "I couldn't be sure about the place of the stones, though," said he,
carefully avoiding direct verbal falsehood; at least, so Irene thought,
trembling at his rashness. He went on:--"Oh dear, how doddery one does
feel on one's legs after a turn out of this kind!" and fell back in his
chair, his sister alone noticing how he touched it with his hand first
to locate it. "I shall be better after a cup of tea," said he. And the
whole thing was so natural that although he had not said in so many
words that he could see anything, the impression that he could was so
strong that Gwen could have laughed aloud for joy. "He really does see
_something_!" she exclaimed to herself.

If he could only have been content with this much of success! But he
must needs think he could improve upon it--reinforce it. His remark
about the cup of tea had half-reference to its appearance on the
horizon; or, rather on the little carved-oak table near the window,
whose flaps were being accommodated for its reception as he spoke. The
dwellers in this part of the country considered five o'clock tea at this
time an invention of their own, and were rather vain of it. Another
decade made it a national institution.

"If there is one thing I enjoy more than another," he said, "it is a
copper urn that boils furiously by magic of its own accord. When I was a
kid our old cook Ursley used to allow me to come into the kitchen and
see the red-hot iron taken out of the fire and dropped into the inner
soul of ours, which was glorious." This was all perfectly safe, because
there was the urn in