you knew Overdene. The duchess gives perfectly
delightful 'best parties,' in which all the people who really enjoy
meeting one another find themselves together, and are well fed and well
housed and well mounted, and do exactly as they like; while the dear
old duchess tramps in and out, with her queer beasts and birds,
shedding a kindly and exciting influence wherever she goes. Last time I
was there she used to let out six Egyptian jerboas in the drawing-room
every evening after dinner, awfully jolly little beggars, like
miniature kangaroos. They used to go skipping about on their hind legs,
frightening some of the women into fits by hiding under their gowns,
and making young footmen drop trays of coffee cups. The last
importation is a toucan,--a South American bird, with a beak like a
banana, and a voice like an old sheep in despair. But Tommy, the
scarlet macaw, remains prime favourite, and I must say he is clever and
knows more than you would think."

"Well, at Overdene we used to play a silly game at dessert with
muscatels. We each put five raisins at intervals round our plates, then
we shut our eyes and made jabs at them with forks. Whoever succeeded
first in spiking and eating all five was the winner. The duchess never
would play. She enjoyed being umpire, and screaming at the people who
peeped. Miss Champion and I--she is the duchess's niece, you
know--always played fair, and we nearly always made a dead heat of it."

"Yes," said Nurse Rosemary, "I know that game. I thought of it at once
when I had my blindfold meals."

"Ah," cried Garth, "had I known, I would not have let you do it!"

"I knew that," said Nurse Rosemary. "That was why I week-ended."

Garth passed his cup to be refilled, and leaned forward confidentially.

"Now," he said, "I can venture to tell you one of my minor trials. I am
always so awfully afraid of there being a FLY in things. Ever since I
was a small boy I have had such a horror of inadvertently eating flies.
When I was about six, I heard a lady visitor say to my mother: 'Oh, one
HAS to swallow a fly--about once a year! I have just swallowed mine, on
the way here!' This terrible idea of an annual fly took possession of
my small mind. I used to be thankful when it happened, and I got it
over. I remember quickly finishing a bit of bread in which I had seen
signs of legs and wings, feeling it was an easy way of taking it and I
should thus be exempt for twelve glad months; but I had to run