gued. "They'd be serenely confident that they and they
alone were the right ones. Then, when they didn't hear from the
advertiser by return, they'd suppose that someone more lucky had got
ahead of them. Yes, we're on the right track! We must want to let our
place furnished. If we wished to sell, we'd have no motive in trying to
pick and choose our buyer. Any creature with money would do. So our
letters would be tame as Teddy-bears. What _we_ want is human
documents!"

"Let's begin to think out our 'ad.'!" exclaimed the patient, sitting up
straighter in his chair. Already two or three haggard years seemed to
have fallen from his face. I might have been skilfully knocking them off
with a hammer!

Like a competent general, I had all my materials at hand: Captain Burns'
favourite brand of cigarettes, matches warranted to light without damns,
a notebook, several sharp, soft-leaded pencils, and some illustrated
advertisements cut from _Country Life_ to give us hints.

"What sort of house _have_ we?" Terry wanted to know. "Is it town or
country; genuine Tudor, Jacobean, Queen Anne, or Georgian----"

"Oh, _country_! It gives us more scope," I cried. "And I think Tudor's
the most attractive. But I may be prejudiced. Courtenaye Abbey--our
place in Devonshire--is mostly Tudor. I'm too poor to live there.
Through Mr. Carstairs it's let to a forty-fourth cousin of mine who did
cowboying in all its branches in America, coined piles of oof in
something or other, and came over here to live when he'd collected
enough to revive a little old family title. But I adore the Abbey."

"Our house shall be Tudor," Terry assented. "It had better be historic,
hadn't it?"

"Why not? It's just as easy for us. Let's have the _oldest_ bits earlier
than Tudor--what?"

"By Jove! Yes! King John. Might look fishy to go behind _him_!"

So, block after block, by suggestion, we two architects of the aerial
school built up the noble mansion we had to dispose of. With loving and
artistic touch, we added feature after feature of interest, as
inspirations came. We were like benevolent fairy god-parents at a baby's
christening, endowing a beloved ward with all possible perfections.

Terry noted down our ideas at their birth, lest we should forget under
pressure of others to follow; and at last, after several discarded
efforts, we achieved an advertisement which combined every attribute of
an earthly paradise.

This is the way it ran:

"To let furnis