It was through the unromantic question of a disease which attacked Johnny Southers’ prize Wyandottes that Mr. Reeder met Anna. She happened to be in the Southers’ back garden when Mr. Reeder was engaged in his diagnosis. She was a slim girl, rather dark, with amazing brown eyes. Her father was a retired fish merchant, who had made a lot of money and had sent her to a high-class school at Brighton, where girls are taught to ride astride, use lipstick and adore the heroes of Hollywood. In some respects her education had been neglected, for she returned to the dullness of Brockley a very sane, well-balanced young lady. She did not find Brockley a “hole.” She did not smoke or do anything which made life worth living, but settled down to the humdrum of a stuffy home as though she had never shared a room with an earl’s daughter or played hockey against an all-England team. Johnny did not fall in love with her at first sight. He had known her since she was so high: when he was a boy she was endurable to him. As a young man he thought her views on life were sound. He discovered he was in love with her as he discovered he was taller than his father. It was a subject for surprise. It was brought home to him when Mr. Clive Desboyne called in his glittering coupé to take Anna to a dinner-dance. He resented Mr. Desboyne’s easy assurance, the proprietorial way he handed Anna into the car. He thought it was appalling bad manners for a man to smoke a cigar when he was driving a lady. Thereafter Johnny found himself opening and examining packing-cases and casks and barrels at the Customs House with a sense of his inferiority and the hopelessness of his future. In such a mood he consulted his authority on poultry, and Mr. Reeder listened with all the interest of one who was hearing a perfectly novel and original story that had never been told before by or to any human being. “I know so very little--um--about love,” said Mr. Reeder awkwardly. “In fact--er--nothing. I would like to advise you to--um--let matters take their course.” Very excellent, if vague, advice. But matters took the wrong course, as it happened. CHAPTER II On the following Saturday night, as Mr. Reeder was returning home, he saw two men fighting in Brockley Road. He had what is called in Portuguese a _repugnancio_ to fighting men. When the hour was midnight and the day was Saturday, there was a considerable weight of supposition in favour of the combat being between two gentlemen who were the worse for intoxicating drink, and it was invariably Mr. Reeder’s practice to cross like the Philistine, to the other side of the road. But the two young men who were engaged in such a short, silent and bitter contest were obviously no hooligans of lower Deptford. They were both wearing evening dress, and gentlemen in evening dress do not as a rule wage war in the streets of Brockley. Nevertheless, Mr. Reeder hardly felt it was the occasion to act either as mediator or timekeeper.