"Oh, you children," laughed Archie, as he walked over to inspect the ham. "Bless you." Miss Fortescue gave a little cough and began to speak. Miss Fortescue is one of those thoroughly good girls who take an interest in everything. A genuine trier. On this occasion she said: "I often wonder who it is who writes those accounts in _The Sportsman_." "It is believed to be Mr Simpson," said Archie. Simpson looked up with a start, and jerked his glasses into his tea. He fished them out and wiped them thoughtfully. "The credible," he began, "is rarely----" "Gentlemen, I pray you silence for Mr Simpson's epigram," cried Archie. "Oh, I always thought Mr Simpson wrote verses in _The Saturday Review_," said Miss Fortescue in the silence which followed. "As a relaxation only," I explained. "The other is his life-work. We read him with great interest; that bit about the heavy roller being requisitioned is my favourite line." "Mr Simpson and Killick and Crawford all play in glasses," put in Myra eagerly, across the table. "That is their only point in common," added Archie. "Oh, isn't he a very good player?" "Well, he's a thoroughly honest and punctual and sober player," I said, "but--the fact is, he and I and the Major don't make many runs nowadays. We generally give, as he has said in one of his less popular poems, a local habitation to the--er--airy nothing." "I thought it was Shakespeare said that." "Shakespeare or Simpson. Hallo, there's Thomas at last." Thomas is in the Admiralty, which is why he is always late. It is a great pity that he was christened Thomas; he can never rise to the top of his profession with a name like that. You couldn't imagine a Thomas McKenna--or even a Thomas Nelson, but he doesn't seem to mind somehow. "Morning, everybody," said Thomas. "Isn't it a beastly day?" "We'll hoist the south cone for you," said Archie, and he balanced a mushroom upside down on the end of his fork. "What's the matter with the day?" asked our host, the Major, still intent on his paper. "It's so early." "When I was a boy----" "My father, Major Mannering," said Archie, "will now relate an anecdote of Waterloo." But the Major was deep in his paper. Suddenly he--there is only one word for it--snorted. "The Budget," said Myra and Archie, exchanging anxious glances. "Ha, that's good," he said, "that's very good! 'If the Chancellor of the Exchequer imagines that he can make his iniquitous Budget more acceptable to a disgusted public by treating it in a spirit of airy persiflage he is at liberty to try. But airy persiflage, when brought into contact with the determined temper of a nation----'" "Who is the hairy Percy, anyhow?" said Thomas to himself.