This counsel of perfection undid the unhappy youth. Hamlin bowled straight and true for the middle stump. The youth smote and missed. “Bif!” yelled Lionel. All out and one minute to spare. As the Nether-Applewhite team carried the Parson shoulder high to the marquee, the stable clock tolled solemnly the defeat of Long-Baddeley. Fishpingle and Alfred hurried to the house, but the Squire’s voice roared after them— “Ben!” “Sir Geoffrey?” “Champagne to-night.” “Yes, Sir Geoffrey.” * * * * * Margot inquired tenderly after Lionel’s hands. He had anticipated “first aid”; it was his, even to the sacrifice of a tiny handkerchief. Lionel demanded nothing more romantic than a tankard of shandygaff. Margot fetched it, for the moment his obedient slave. Joyce ministered as faithfully to her father with ginger beer. When the yellow ’bus was full, inside and out, the Squire made a short speech to which Fordingbridge responded. How pleasant it is to hear such simple rhetoric! How invidious the task of setting it down! The better team had won. A jolly day was over. Three cheers for Sir Geoffrey Pomfret! And three cheers for his “lardship”! Lionel said to Margot— “This is the sort of thing we dream of on the Plains. The whole scene rises out of the desert, like a mirage.” “I wonder if it is a mirage?” “Eh?” “_Tout passe._” She sighed. Lionel looked at her uneasily, wondering if a vein of cynicism, seldom displayed, was merely superficial. At any rate Joyce and she had forced him to think, to analyse his thoughts, to draw inferences from them. He said slowly: “I took it all for granted before I went to India. It never occurred to me then that I was fortunate in my home or in anything else. I remember ‘grousing’ if a cog in the machinery slipped. Machinery! That’s the word. I reckoned this to be machinery. By George! I hadn’t wit enough to reflect that machinery doesn’t last for ever and ever.” She made no reply. Her sprightly brain was busy, applying what he had said to herself. For her the past fortnight had been a fresh experience, and perfectly delightful. The peaceful atmosphere, the rest to her own over-stimulated nerves, her courteous hosts, her ever-increasing interest in the young man beside her, so different from the strivers and pushers of the metropolitan market-place—these had sufficed. Would they suffice if she held them in perpetuity? Frankly, she didn’t know; an odd misgiving assailed her. Was she a creature of change, incapable of finding happiness in stable conditions? She heard Lionel’s voice coming back to her, as if from a distance. He was talking of Fishpingle. “The dear old boy kept wicket jolly well, and he looked so ripping on his flannels.” “Yes. The moment I saw him—I knew. The mystery was solved.” “What did you know?”