The carriage was to meet some of the guests who came from London, and I went down to the station myself and arranged with one of the cabmen there, so that Mr. Cartwright should be brought up alone and without being crowded by the children. My mother said I could ask him to stay the night, and ordered a room at the hotel; but he wrote to say he had another engagement in town, and he desired to catch the seven fifty-four back. I remarked that this showed how popular he was in society; my mother gave a word approving businesslike habits. It seemed exactly like Mr. Cartwright that he should arrive in the cab at the precise hour arranged. “Had a good journey?” I cried, running to him in the hall as he was getting out of his thick overcoat. “I was afraid, somehow, that you’d back out of it at the last moment.” “Never disappoint the public,” he replied cheerfully. “Sometimes I disappoint myself, but that is another matter.” I asked what he had in his large bag. “Brought down a figure; thought perhaps a little ventriloquism would be a novelty.” “Anything you do will be sure to be appreciated. I’ve been thinking ever since I met you of the perfectly splendid way you entertained at that party.” “Good man!” “And I do feel it’s most awfully kind of you to come all this distance just to oblige me. Let’s go upstairs, shall we, Mr. Cartwright? I’ll take you to the room that used to be called the nursery.” He got rid of his overcoat there, and, asking me for a pair of scissors, went carefully with them around the edge of his shirt cuffs. I inquired whether he had been going out to many parties since I last saw him: he replied that he had no right to complain; there were plenty of exceedingly clever people about and he could only regard himself as cleverish. I exhibited the soldiers that mother had given me for my birthday. He took the blue men, I took the red, and he was Napoleon and I Wellington. We sat upon the floor, and he was so very good as to show me exactly what happened at the battle of Waterloo, an incident of peculiar interest to me, because it occurred on one of the few dates I am able to retain in my memory. “But, Mr. Cartwright, how is it you know so much about this?” He was moving some dominoes up from the right to represent the approach of Blucher and the German troops. “Used to be a soldier man,” he replied. “Why ever didn’t you stay in the army, and become a Field Marshal?” “By Jove!” he cried, “that would have been a rattling good idea. Wonder I didn’t think of it at the time.” “Is it too late now?” “Surely not,” he answered promptly, “for such an exceptionally fortunate person as I am. Anyway, so far as 1815 is concerned, Blucher, you see, had Grouchy to compete with—this double-six is Grouchy, with thirty-five thousand men—but Blucher outmarched him, came up, and—” He swept the rest of his blue men down with a wave of the hand, and hummed “Rule, Britannia.”