"Carey will have to play that game with glass balls. Solitaire. Yes. We must remember to bring a board with us." "But what about the chess gentleman?" asked Henry. "I must go and find one. We've had one refusal." There is an editor I know slightly, so I called upon him at his office. I found him writing verses. "Be brief," he said, "I'm frightfully busy." "I have just three questions to ask you," I replied. "What rhymes with 'yorker'?" "That wasn't one of them." "Yorker--corker--por----" "Better make it a full pitch," I suggested. "Step out and make it a full pitch. Then there are such lots of rhymes." "Thanks, I will. Well?" "One. Do you play bridge?" "No." "Two. Do you play chess?" "I can." "Three. Do you play cricket? Not that it matters." "Yes, I do sometimes. Good-bye. Send me a proof, will you? By the way, what paper is this for?" "_The Sportsman_, if you'll play. On Friday week. Do." "Anything, if you'll go." "May I have that in writing?" He handed me a rejection form. "There you are. And I'll do anything you like on Friday." I went back to Henry and told him the good news. "I wonder if he'll mind being black," said Henry. "That's the chap that always gets mated so quickly." "I expect they'll arrange it among themselves. Anyhow, we've done our best for them." "It's an awful business, getting up a team," said Henry thoughtfully. "Well, we shall have two decent sets of bridge, anyway. But you ought to have arranged for twelve aside, and then we could have left out the chess professors and had three sets." "It's all the fault of the rules. Some day somebody will realise that four doesn't go into eleven, and then we shall have a new rule." "No, I don't think so," said Henry. "I don't fancy 'Wanderer' would allow it." III. IN THE TRAIN If there is one thing I cannot stand, it is ingratitude. Take the case of Carey. Carey, you may remember, professed himself unable to play either bridge or chess; and as we had a three-hour journey before us it did not look as though he were going to have much of a time. However, Henry and I, thinking entirely of Carey's personal comfort, went to the trouble of buying him a solitaire board, with glass balls complete. The balls were all in different colours. I laid this before Carey as soon as we settled in the train. "Whatever's that?" "The new game," I said. "It's all the rage now, the man tells me. The Smart Set play it every Sunday. Young girls are inveigled into lonely country houses and robbed of incredible sums." Carey laughed scornfully. "So it is alleged," I added. "The inventor claims for it that in some respects it has advantages which even cricket cannot claim. As, for instance, it can be played in any weather: nay, even upon the sick bed." "And how exactly is it played?"