breakfasting with them, and being hungry I was pleased to find that they took breakfast seriously. They’d have kept me there all day if I could have stopped, but the business of this problem required me to move on. ‘At half-past twelve I played the same trick again six miles up the road. Once more it worked perfectly. My hostess was an old lady of the almost extinct type that knows how to live. Everything about the place was just exactly. The luncheon was just exactly. And she gave me a very fine old Amontillado—a wine that we don’t see enough of nowadays. I can’t say whether it was the sherry or the success, but when I left I felt that I had got the club’s cheque for one hundred and ten pounds in my pocket and was listening to the chairman’s kindly words of congratulation. My mistake, of course. Begin well, but not too well. If you begin too well, mistrust it. ‘About seven that evening I was painting a garden which was really rather good in that light. (I’d sent in my card and got permission.) As I was finishing the job and rather wrapped up in it I heard a Scotch accent behind me, saying that the sketch was “no bad” and “verra like.” He and I discussed the comparative merits of painting and photography. For accuracy he “prefaired the photograph, but then it didna give the colours.” As before, I presented the sketch, and I still think that he was pleased with it. He asked me to sign it, so as to prove to his friends that he “wasna lying” when he said that it was by a professed painter, and admitted that he would not grudge the money it would cost for framing and glazing. He then said he made no doubt I would be hurrying home for my dinner, and he would wish me good-evening. And so, in a manner of speaking, I fell at the last hurdle. Still, I suppose I score the breakfast and luncheon.’ The Hon. James Feldane addressed the chairman:— ‘I’d like your ruling on that point, sir. And it’s quite impartial, because I am not competing myself this time.’ ‘Not competing?’ said the chairman. ‘Might I ask what stopped you? Hitherto you have been one of the keenest and most sporting of our members, in spite of your air of—er—lassitude.’ ‘What stopped me,’ said Jimmy simply, ‘was breakfast. Breakfast is bad enough at any time, especially if you’ve been rather late and busy the night before. But to breakfast with an absolute stranger on chance food, and to go out and dig for the invitation first—well, it was unthinkable. I’m sorry to spoil old Wildersley’s score, and if he’d bunged me one of his sketches instead of chucking them about the suburbs I might have been able to stifle the voice of conscience. As it is, I feel bound to raise the objection that he gave remuneration for the breakfast and luncheon—to wit, two sketches.’