elders, children who became either vacantly depressed or assertively restless. The real fun of the day was waiting, the roundabout, the races, the mugs of tea, and the buns.

Two men in flannel suits and Panama hats stood just outside the marquee doorway.

“Where’s Parallax?”

“Up at the house, playing croquet with Grace Abercorn. I promised to fetch him, when the star turn was due. They’ll think he has just rushed down from town by motor.”

“Listen to the indefatigable woman.”

“You know, she might be doing some sort of ultra-subtle Maud Allan business, if you put her in beads.”

“My dear chap!”

“Fifteen minutes already, and we expected three. It is no use trying to stop her. She’s like a soda water bottle with the cork out. You can’t do anything till all the gas has escaped.”

“I’ll just go down and see how the Sports Committee are getting along. Oh, by the way, I’ve booked you and Ethel for our houseboat at Henley.”

“Thanks. I’ll remember.”

On the lawn below Lady Marchendale’s terrace garden Lord Parallax was flirting with a clever and audacious little woman in grey and silver. Ostensibly they were playing croquet, while old Percival Kex, Esq., sat in a French cane chair under the lime tree, and quizzed Parallax when he came within range.

“Well, will you take my bet, or not?”

“Don’t talk at the critical moment, sir. This game turns on the Suffrage question.”

“Here, Gracie, do you hear him trying to shirk my challenge?”

Miss Abercorn trailed her mallet towards the lime tree. Percival Kex was a character, with his tin-plate face, bold head, and eyes like blackberries. His tongue fished in many waters, and his genial cynicism was infinitely refreshing.

“I have wagered Parallax six sevenpenny insurance stamps that he won’t escape the Wriggling Lady.”

“My dear sir, how can I, when——”

“Wait a moment. One handshake, six smiles, and three minutes’ conversation will be allowed. After that you have got to keep clear, and I bet you you won’t.”

“Kex, I always lay myself out to be bored at these functions. That is why I am playing croquet, and attempting to get some compensation.”

“Who’s to snatch at that feather, Gracie, you or I? I suppose it is yours.”

“Hallo, here’s Meryon! I’m due on the boards.”

“Miss Abercorn, I desire you to come and act as time-keeper, and to hold the stakes.”

Percival Kex won his six insurance stamps without much difficulty. Parallax made his oration, and when the audience had dispersed, he became the immediate victim of Mrs. Canterton’s enthusiasms. They paraded the grounds together, Parallax polite, stiff, and full of a disastrous disgust; Gertrude Canterton earnestly vivadous, poking her chin at him, and exerting all her public charm. Parallax was considered to be a great personality, and she insisted upon his being interesting and serious, giving him every opportunity to be brilliant upon such subjects as Welsh Disestablishment, the inadequacy of the Navy, and the importation of pork from China. She kept him for more than an hour, introduced him to numberless honest souls who were content with a shake of the hand, insinuated in every way that she knew that he was a very great man, but never suspected that he wanted to play croquet.

Parallax detached himself at last, and found Kex and Miss Abercorn having tea under the lime tree in that secluded corner where none of the Leaguers penetrated.

“By George, Kex, I’ve never been taken so seriously in my life! Let me see—where am I? I think I got bogged in Tariff Reform.”

“We thought we would come and have tea, Parallax. We saw you were too occupied.”

“Kex, you are an old scoundrel. Why didn’t you rescue me when you had won your bet?”

“Sir, I am not a hero.”

“Is there a whisky and soda to be had? Oh, here’s a servant. Bring me a whisky and soda, will you?”

He sat down and looked reproachfully at Miss Abercorn.

“I suppose it would never occur to such a woman that a man might want to play croquet?”

“Croquet, Parallax! My dear fellow, think of the Empire, and——”

“Hang the Empire. Here’s my whisky.”

“Don’t you think you had better make sure of it by going and drinking it in the shrubbery? She may follow you up to see what you’ve got to say on Eugenics.”

“Miss Abercorn, will you protect me? Really, I have had too much Minerva.”

“That apple! I always had a lot of sympathy with Paris. I think he was a particularly bright young man.”

“One word, Kex: has the lady a husband?”

“She has.”

“Thank God, and Heaven help him!”

LYNETTE FEEDS THE FAIRIES

About six o’clock James Canterton took leave of Guinevere, and passing out through the yew hedge, made his way down the rhododendron walk to the wicket gate that opened on the side of a hill. On this hill-side was the “heath garden” that tumbled when in full bloom like a cataract of purple and white wine till it broke against the shadowy edge of a larch wood. The spires of the larches descended in glimmering confusion towards the stream that ran among poplars and willows in the bottom of the valley.

Canterton followed a path that led into the larch wood where the thousands of grey black poles were packed so close together that the eye could not see for more than thirty yards. There was a faint and mysterious murmuring in the tree tops, a sound as of breathing that was only to be heard when one stood still. The ground was covered with thin, wiry grass of a peculiarly vivid green. The path curled this way and that among the larch trunks, with a ribbon of blue sky mimicking it overhead. The wood was called the wilderness, and even when a gale was blowing, it was calm and sheltered in the deeps among the trees.

Canterton paused now and again to examine some of the larches. He had been working at the spruce gall aphis disease, trying to discover a new method of combating it, or of lighting upon some other creature that by preying upon the pest might be encouraged to extirpate the disease. The winding path led him at last to the lip of a large dell or sunken clearing. It was a pool of yellow sunlight in the midst of the green glooms, palisaded round with larch trunks, its banks a tangle of broom, heather, bracken, whortleberry, and furze. There was a boggy spot in one corner where gorgeous mosses made a carpet of green and gold, and bog asphodel grew, and the sundew fed upon insects. All about the clearing the woods were a blue mist when the wild hyacinth bloomed in May.

Down below him in a grassy hollow a child with brilliant auburn hair was feeding a fire with dry sticks. She knelt intent and busy, serenely alone with herself, tending the fire that she had made. Beside her she had a tin full of water, an old saucepan, two or three potatoes, some tea and sugar twisted up together in the corner of a newspaper, and a medicine bottle half full of milk.

“Hallo—hallo!”

The auburn hair flashed in the sunlight, and the child turned the face of a