’Depends on how bad your cold is,’ he began, but I closed the conversation. Alas, alas, hear the end. Half an hour later the S.P. said would I speak to the captain in the garden? I found him in front of the kitchen window surveying some extraordinary earth-works and excavations, the Stench standing by looking particularly wooden. ’What on earth——’ I began. ’I’ve dug so deep, mum, I come to a poipe; do it matter?’ said the boy. I surveyed the scene of his labours and found the little wretch had dug down to the kitchen drain. ’Gardening is certainly your strong point, Meg. Do you think the boy has dug this bit deep enough, or shall he take up the drains as well? By Jove,’ added my brother, doubling up suddenly with laughter, ’what an acquisition you’d both be in the army. I never saw a better communication trench in my life.’ At tea-time Ross gloomily surveyed the table lightly spread with thin bread and butter and minute cakes. ’Well, there doesn’t seem enough for Fitzbattleaxe, so let’s go and have tea with Sam. He’s dead down on his luck, too.’ ’Knee bad?’ I questioned. ’Putrid, so’s his temper since I rowed him this morning.’ ’What did you row him for?’ I asked. ’Usual thing. Found him standing up brushing my clothes to-day, so I pitched into him for once in his life, hot and strong. It is rotten for him, but I really had to tell him a few home truths. He simply must stick his leg up all day.’ So we went up into Sam’s little sitting-room with Fitzbattleaxe. ’Better?’ said Ross, as he went in. ’Yes, thank you, sir,’ said Sam, and got up hastily as I entered. ’Forgotten your orders again, Brown?’ asked Ross sternly, opening the door to go out. ’No, sir,’ said Sam, still standing up. (I do love to see him ’fighting’ Ross.) ’Orders were: "Bed at 11. Not to stand up when it were you only, between the hours of 10.30 a.m. and 7 p.m.," sir.’ Quite obviously Sam was obeying the strict letter of the law, so Ross came in again, and I remarked,— ’And I say, same hours when it’s only me, Sam.’ ’If you could both remember about the verb "to be,"’ began my brother. ’I can’t,’ I said. Sam dropped into a chair, looking as if he’d like to smash all clocks, and remarked he was absolutely fed up. ’Well, we’re not, we’re half starved. That’s why we’ve come to tea.’ ’You want to count your mercies, Sam,’ I said, which being a remark to which my Aunt Amelia is much addicted, was the most aggravating thing I could think of at the moment. When one is down on one’s luck it is fatal to be sympathetic, and Sam was down on his, right on the bed-rock bottom of it. ’Well, I’m counting the mercies he’s got and we haven’t,’ said Ross; ’there’s quite a respectable bit of heaven spread on this table at the moment. A whole loaf, a pound of butter, two pounds of strawberry jam and jorams of Devonshire cream, goodies with sugar on top, and a plum cake that you can cut. My hat, some people have all the luck. It’s a regular Hickley Wood one.’