Charles, exhausted by the morning's combat, had slept heavily, but now he roused himself to take the rôle of Arbiter of Destinies. He roused himself, sat up, snuffled and blew, and then, with wide smile and lolling tongue, proclaimed himself to be that pitiable and suffering creature, a bull-terrier dying of thirst. In vain Edward sought to calm him; he insisted that he was, and that he had a right to be, thirsty. His insistence affected his master. Edward became aware that he, also, was thirsty; more, was hungry. His watch showed him that the chauffeur had every right to consider himself an ill-used man. A bright-faced hotel whose windows were underlined with marguerites and pink geraniums beckoned attractively. "After all, one must live," said Edward, and breathed an order. The car drew up in front of the White Horse. Another car was there--unattended--a very nice car. Edward wished it had been his. It had all those charms which his own hired one lacked, and his experienced eye dwelt fondly on those charms. "Get yourself something to eat," he said to the chauffeur. Charles, straining toward the horse-trough, seemed anxious to prove that his thirst had not been simulated. Edward indulged him. Arrived at the wet granite, however, Charles lapped a tongueful or two, as it were out of politeness and merely to oblige, and then looked up at his master expressively. "You have sadly misunderstood me," he seemed to say. "What I wanted was breakfast," adding, reproachfully, "You will remember that there has been none to-day." He dragged his master to the hotel door, where they passed in under hanging-baskets of pink and white flowers, and in a coffee-room adorned with trophies of the chase Edward ordered luncheon for himself and biscuits for Charles. Now mark the vagaries of Destiny: Charles, impatient for the biscuits, dragged his chain about the coffee-room, empty at this hour of all but himself and his master; he upset the tongs and the shovel and brought them clattering to the fender. Edward replaced them in their stands. Then Charles put his feet in an antimacassar and dragged it to the floor. After this he went to the writing-table under the wire blind in the middle window and snuffled curiously in the waste-paper basket, upsetting it almost without an effort, and a litter of letters and envelopes and torn circulars was discharged. Edward, hastening to repair these ravages, scooped the torn fragments in his hands--and on the very top, fronting him, was an envelope bearing his own name--Basingstoke.