Five minutes later, Geoffrey came running back alone; breathlessly he jerked out: “_Such_ a trick as I’ve played her! She offered to race me to the big pear-tree, each starting from the garden-gate, and going one north the other south; I agreed, and when I saw her well started south I just came home! What a state she will be in when she finds herself alone at the end of the ghost-walk! She says she is _not_, but I believe she is, horribly afraid of ghosts and bogies; and if she meets the cavalier who is said to stalk about the garden won’t it be fun? I only wish I had thought of it in time, I’d have dressed up. It pays her off nicely for some of the pretty little jokes she has practised on me. It’s not too late yet”--snatching up a shawl and a garden-hat and commencing a toilet. “I can’t say that I exactly see the humour of the situation,” said Reginald, as, springing down the steps and vaulting lightly over an iron railing, he set off by a short cut to the garden at a run. “Active fellow, is he not?” observed Geoffrey, removing the shawl in which he had already enveloped himself. “But this alacrity in joining his wife, in the present overcharged state of the domestic atmosphere, is something quite new. The sky is not going to fall, is it?” he added, looking up interrogatively. “No; but really, Geoffrey, you shouldn’t have left her,” remonstrated Helen. “The garden is an awful eerie place by moonlight, I should not care to take a solitary walk there myself.” * * * * * The pear-tree, which was to have been the goal, was the pear-tree _par excellence_ of the whole garden; it was trained along a wall covered with fruit-trees, beneath which ran a broad gravel terrace, approached by several flights of steps, one of which was exactly opposite this particular tree. Alice, breathless and triumphant, had arrived first at the foot of the steps. She looked up and down the broad walk; no sign of Geoffrey. “How very odd,” she thought. Presently she heard his rapidly-approaching footsteps, and, mounting the terrace, began to gather pears with much deliberation. Hearing him arrive, she never troubled to turn her head, merely remarking as she reached up for a lovely, yellow, corpulent pear: “Snail! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I could trundle a wheelbarrow faster than you can run.” “Could you indeed?” replied her husband, putting his arm round her slender waist. “Geoffrey, how dare----Reginald!” she gasped, dropping all the pears. “_I_ may _dare_, may I not?” said he, taking her in his arms and giving her twenty kisses. “Look here,” said he, smiling at her indignant eyes and crimson cheeks, “I’ve just had a letter from you, my darling,” producing the letter and hurriedly telling her the story. “And the other one I wrote to Afghanistan?” she asked breathlessly. “That I never heard of till now; the Afridis made short work of our letters.”