Charles, I perceive you are crying; let us turn to more cheerful things. Do you play croquet? I have just joined a croquet club (don't know why), and one of the rules is that you have to supply your own mallet. How do you do this? Of course, I know that ultimately I hand a certain sum of money to a shopman, and he gives me a very awkward parcel in exchange; but what comes before that? I have often bought a bat, and though I have not yet selected one which could make runs, I can generally find something which is pretty comfortable to carry back into the pavilion. But I have never chosen a mallet. What sort of weight should it be, and is it a good thing to say it "doesn't come up very well"? I have, they tell me, a tendency to bowness in the legs and am about a million round the biceps; I suppose all that is rather important? Perhaps they have their mallets classified for different customers, and you have only to describe yourself to them. I shall ask for a _Serviceable mallet for a blond_. "Serviceable" means that if you hit the ground very hard by accident it doesn't break; some of these highly strung mallets splinter up at once, you know. As a matter of fact, you can't miss the ball at croquet, can you? I am thinking of golf. What about having a splice with mine; is that done much? I don't want to go on to the ground looking a perfect ass with no splice, when everybody else has two or three. Croquet is a jolly game, because you don't have to worry about what sort of collar you'll wear; you just play in your ordinary things. All the same, I shall have some spikes put in my boots so as not to slip. I once took in to dinner the sister of the All England Croquet Champion. I did really. Unfortunately I didn't happen to strike her subject, and she didn't strike mine--_Butterflies_. How bitterly we shall regret that evening--which was a very jolly one all the same. Here am I, not knowing a bit how to select a mallet, and there possibly is she, having just found the egg of the Purple Emperor, labelling it in her collection as that of the Camberwell Beauty. Let this be a lesson to all of us. Charles, I feel very silly to-night; I must be what they call "fey," which is why I ask you--How would you like to be a pedigree goat? I have just seen in an evening paper a picture of Mr Brown "with his pedigree goat." Somehow it had never occurred to me that a goat could have a pedigree; but I see now that it might be so. I think if I had to be a goat at all I should like to be a pedigree one. In a way, I suppose, every goat has a pedigree of some kind; but you would need to have a pretty distinguished one to be spoken of as a P.G. Your father, Charles, would need to have had some renown among the bearded ones; your great-uncle must have been of the blood. And if this were so, I should, in your place, insist upon being photographed as a pedigree goat "with Mr Brown." Don't stand any nonsense about that.