Miss Bacchus, it seems, was his old acquaintance. She too called him Jimmy, and drove at him with vigour. He charged her not to rally him, and being between the two sisters, talked to both of them at once, or rather started them off, as a music-hall singer starts the gallery, and then let them go on over his head. They talked of Wycross, Lucy's house in the country, compared it with Peltry, which Mabel deprecated as a barrack, and came to hear of Urquhart's house in the New Forest. It was called Martley Thicket. Urquhart said it was a good sort of place. "I've made an immense lake," he said, with his eyes so very wide that Miss Bacchus said, "You're making two, now." He described Martley and the immense lake. "House stands high in beech woods, but is cut out to the south. It heads a valley--lawns on three sides, smooth as billiard tables--then the lake with a marble lip--and steps--broad and low steps, in flights of eight. Very good, you know. You shall see it." Lucy wanted to know, "How big was the lake, really." Urquhart said, "It looked a mile--but that's the art of the thing. Really, it's two hundred and fifty yards. Much better than a jab in the eye with a blunt stick. I did it by drainage, and a dam. Took a year to get the water up. When a hunted stag took to it and swam across, I felt that I'd done something. Fishing? I should think so. And a bathing-house in a wooded corner--in a cane-brake of bamboos. You'll like it." Miss Bacchus said, "I don't believe a word of it;" but he seemed not to hear her. "When will you come and see it?" he asked Lucy. She agreed that see it she must, if only to settle whether it existed or not. "You see that Miss Bacchus has no doubts." Urquhart said, "She never has--about anything. She is fixed in certainty like a bee in amber. A dull life." "Bless you, Jimmy," she said, "I thrive on it--and you'll never thrive." "Pooh!" said Urquhart, "what you call thriving I call degradation. What! you snuggle in there out of the draughts--and then somebody comes along and rubs you, and picks up bits of paper with you." His good spirits made the thing go--and James's eyeglass prevailed not against it. But Urquhart's real triumph was at dessert--Lancelot sedately by his mother; between her and the Judge, who briskly made way for him. Lancelot in his Eton jacket took on an air of precocious, meditative wisdom infinitely diverting to a man who reflects upon boys--and, no doubt, infinitely provocative. His coming broke up the talk and made one of those momentous pauses which are sometimes paralysing to a table. This one was so, and even threatened the neighbouring island. Upon it broke the voice of Urquhart talking to Mabel Corbet.