‘Nothing doing,’ said Jimmy. ‘I went to the Zoo, just as I said I would. But, if you ask me, the whole place is rotten with red tape and officialism. They wouldn’t lend me the blessed quagga, though I promised them I’d return it in five minutes. Said it was not customary to lend out the animals, and a lot of silly talk like that. Quite obstinate about it, too. I’d got Hesseltine there to take a snapshot of me shepherding the quagga in the wilds of Regent’s Park, and it simply meant our valuable time thrown away. Also, it appeared that quaggas are out of print and they’d not got one. ‘But quite apart from that I’m not claiming to have won. I’ve only got two things down on my list that have not been claimed so far. The first was the queen of spades from a pack of cards, and the second is the four kings from the same pack. I don’t spell the word king with a Q, but the four of them are a quatorse, at piquet. But a score of two’s no use, and I shall probably be described on my tombstone as brainy but unfortunate. Meanwhile I notice a sunny smile on the face of our padre, as if he were a prize-winner. He might tell us how he did it.’ The Rev. Septimus Cunliffe had certainly been energetic and industrious. To start with he had called upon an old friend of his, a man of some learning, with an interest in music and a fair library. Here he had no difficulty in borrowing Quixote, Quivedo, Quintillian, Quain, and some quadrilles, quartets, and quintets. He engaged his host in a discussion as to the precise meaning of a quip, a quirk, and a quiddity, persuaded him to write down an instance of each, and borrowed the instances. He borrowed a quatrain of his host’s composition, and twenty-four sheets of notepaper, which make a quire. The next two days were less productive, but he borrowed a specimen of quartz from one man, and a dog, which was unquestionably a quadruped, from another. A lady who was interested in archery lent him a quiver. Loans of a quoit, a quart of milk, and a quarter of coal were also negotiated. But all the same, his smile of self-congratulation was premature. He was not destined to score eighteen, for the simple reason that he had not borrowed a single thing which was not on the list of either Lord Herngill, or Mr Quillian, or Mr Pusely-Smythe. And they in their turn could not score because everything on their lists was also on the parson’s. Industry had cancelled industry; ingenuity had destroyed ingenuity. The only other member who could produce a score at all was Mr Matthews. He registered a modest score of one for having borrowed a quarrel. It was in vain that Hesseltine maintained that you could pick a quarrel but could not borrow one. The chairman referred to his standard dictionary and learned that a quarrel was not necessarily a dispute; it might be a diamond-shaped pane of glass, which was, in fact, what Mr Matthews had borrowed.