ning the exhibits, had been feeling like a fool. Their name
humanized them and relieved his awkward feeling. "Ha! Jinks, eh? High
Jinks and Low Jinks, what?" He laughed. It struck him as rather comic;
and High Jinks and Low Jinks tittered broadly, losing in the most
astonishing way the one her severity and the other her glumness.

Mabel seemed suddenly to have lost her interest in her exhibits and
their cage. She rather hurried Mark through the kitchen premises and,
moving into the garden, replied rather abstractedly to his plans for the
garden's development.

Suddenly she said, "Mark, I do wish you hadn't said that in the
kitchen."

He was mentally examining the possibilities of a makeshift racket court
against a corner of the stable and barn. "Eh, what in the kitchen,
dear?"

"That about High Jinks and Low Jinks."

"Mabel, I swear we could fix up a topping sort of squash rackets in that
corner. Those cobbles are worn absolutely smooth--"

"I wish you'd listen to me, Mark."

He caught his arm around her and gave her a playful squeeze. "Sorry, old
girl, what was it? About High Jinks and Low Jinks? Ha! Dashed funny
that, don't you think?"

"No, I don't. I don't think it's a bit funny."

Her tone was such that, relaxing his arm, he turned and gazed at her.
"_Don't_ you? Don't you really?"

"No, I don't. Far from funny."

Some instinct told him he ought not to laugh, but he could not help it.
The idea appealed to him as distinctly and clearly comic. "Well, but it
_is_ funny. Don't you see? High Jinks alone is such a funny
expression--sort of--well, you know what I mean. Apart altogether from
Low Jinks," and he laughed again.

Mabel compressed her lips. "I simply don't. Rebecca is not a bit like
High Jinks."

He burst out laughing. "No, I'm dashed if she is. That's just it!"

"I really do not see it."

"Oh, go on, Mabel! Of course you do. You make it funnier. High Jinks and
Low Jinks! I shall call them that."

"Mark." She spoke the word severely and paused severely. "Mark. I do
most earnestly hope you'll do nothing of the kind."

He stared, puzzled. He had tried to explain the absurd thing, and she
simply could not see it. "I simply don't."

And again that vague and transient discomfort shot through him.

IX

Sabre awoke in the course of that night and lay awake. The absurd
incident came immediately into his mind and remained in his mind. High
Jinks and Low Jinks _was_ comic. No getting over it.