Miss Joan Gaymer turned and regarded her companion with unfeigned astonishment. He was still sprawling, but his indolent pose of lazy contentment was gone, and for a moment challenge peeped out of his steely eyes. She rose deliberately from the grass, and walked with great stateliness back to the croquet-lawn. Hughie sat on, feeling slightly breathless. He had just realised that he possessed a temper. Presently Mrs. Leroy completed a sequence of five hoops and retired, followed by the applause of an incompetent partner, to the copper-beech. She sat down opposite Hughie, and surveyed him expectantly. "Well, Hughie?" she said. "Well, Mildred?" "_Well_, Hughie?" "I think," said Hughie, answering the unspoken question, "that she wants--_slapping_!" Mildred Leroy nodded her head sagely. "Ah!" she remarked. "I thought you would say that. Well, I hope you'll do it." * * * * * Hughie reviewed the events of the day, _more suo_, at three o'clock next morning, sitting with his feet on the sill of his open bedroom window,--the bedroom of his boyhood, with the old school and 'Varsity groups upon the walls,--as he smoked a final pipe before retiring to rest. It was almost dawn. The velvety darkness was growing lighter in texture; and occasionally an early-rising and energetic young bird would utter a tentative chirrup--only to subside, on meeting with no encouragement from the other members of the orchestra (probably trades unionists), until a more seasonable hour. Hughie had sat on with D'Arcy and Leroy in the billiard-room long after the other men--Joey's _clientèle_--had emptied their glasses and gone to bed. There had been a "ladies' night," accompanied by fearsome games (of a character detrimental to the table) between sides captained by Joey and another damsel; and even after Mildred Leroy had swept her charges upstairs there had been bear-fighting and much shrieking in the passages and up the staircase. Then the younger gentlemen had returned, rumpled but victorious, to quench their thirst and listen with respectful deference to any tale that the great Marrable might care to unfold. (The story of the Orinoco had gone round, though it had mercifully escaped the notice of the halfpenny papers.) But Hughie had not been communicative, though he had proved an eager and appreciative listener to 'Varsity gossip and athletic "shop." So the young men, having talked themselves to a standstill, had gradually faded away, highly gratified to find the great man not only willing but eager to listen to their meticulous chronicles; and Hughie and D'Arcy and Leroy, their symposium reduced to companionable limits, had compared notes and "swapped lies," as the Americans say, far into the night.