These are Riding, Driving, Shooting, Fishing, Fencing, Polo, Rotting and Log-rolling, or at least, that's what his friend Mr. Aix read out to us one afternoon he came to see us, out of the very newest edition, and George was in the room too, and laughed. All this time Ariadne and I were kept hard at it copying things. George talked of nothing but atriums and tricliniums and environments. I only interrupted once, when I said that they had never mentioned a main staircase, and was it going to be outside, like those wooden ones you see in the country, with the fowls stepping up to bed on them? They thanked me, and added an inside stairs to the plan at once. As soon as we get into the new house, George intends to raise his prices. He expects to get ten pounds per "thou." He told Middleman, his literary agent, so. Up to now his price was four pound ten per "thou." for articles, and the royalties on his last book are going to pay for the new house. Middleman says George will be quite right to charge establishment charges. Middleman is supposed to have a faint, very faint sense of humour, and that's the only way people get at him. Mr. Aix says Middleman can run up an author's sales twenty per cent. in no time, if he fancies you personally, or thinks there's money in you. George's new book is going to be not mediæval this time; people have imitated him and _The Adventures of Sir Bore and Sir Weariful_ was brought out just to plague him, so he is going to quit that for a time. He thinks that the Isles of Greece would be a good place to dump a few English aristocrats and tell their adventures on. He will go abroad soon, but is waiting for some of the aristocrats to make up a party and pay his expenses. Meanwhile Cinque Cento House, as it is to be called, rose like a thief in the night, and as it grew higher and higher Mother's face grew longer and longer. She refused to go near it, and it was Lady Scilly who helped George to arrange the furniture. Aunt Gerty, however, is practical, and tried to get Mother to take some interest in her own mansion. "I do," Mother said, "but at a distance. I couldn't be of any use advising, and whatever I advised, George would still take his own way. That odious woman, whom I thank God I have never set eyes on, is always about, and would put my back up if I met her there, and I should say things I should be sorry for after. No, Gerty, let them arrange it as they like, and buy furniture and set it up. It is George's own money. He earned it." "Not by the sweat of his brow, at all events!" sneered my aunt. "I came to him without a penny, and I haven't the right to dictate so much as the position of a wardrobe." "You're the man's lawful wife," said Aunt Gerty, as she always did. One got tired of the expression. "Yes, unfortunately," said Mother. "Or I'd have a better chance! But I am _not_ going to fight over George with that minx!"