No one spoke for a minute; the children felt subdued, a little cloud seemed to have descended among them. Then the admiral cheered up, and quickened his steps. "Tea!" he remarked briskly. 4 Over the immaculate lawn that stretched to the right of the house, came the white-clad manservant carrying a tray; the tea-table was laid under a big walnut tree. This was the sheltered side of the house, where, as the admiral would say, you could grow something besides seaweed. The old clipped yews were trim and cared for; peacocks and roosters and stately spirals. Between them the borders were bright with homely flowers. The admiral had found this garden when he bought the place; he had pulled down the old house to build his ship, but the garden he had taken upon himself as a sacred trust. In it he worked to kill the green fly and the caterpillar, and dreamed to keep memory alive. They sat down to tea; from the other side of a battlemented hedge came the whirring, sleepy sound of a mowing machine, someone was mowing the bowling green. They grew silent. A wasp tumbled into the milk jug; with great care the admiral pulled it out and let it crawl up his hand. "Silly," he said reprovingly, "silly creature!" It paused in its painful milk-logged walk to stroke its bedraggled wings with its back legs, then it washed its face ducking its jointed head. The old man watched it placidly presently it flew away. "It never said 'Thank you,' did it?" he laughed. "No, but it didn't sting," said Joan. "They never sting when you do them a good turn, and that's more than you can say of some people, Miss Joan." Tea over, they strolled through the garden; at the far end was a small low building designed to correspond with the house. "What's that?" they asked him. "We're coming to that," he answered. "That's where the mice live." "Oh, may we see them, please let us see them all!" Joan implored. "Of course you shall see them, that's what I brought you here for; there are dozens and dozens," he said proudly. Inside the Mousery the smell was overpowering, but it is doubtful if any of the three noticed it. Down the centre of the single long room ran a brick path on either side of which were shelves three deep, divided into roomy sections. The admiral stopped before one of them. "Golden Agouti," he remarked. He took hold of a rectangular box, the front of which was wired; very slyly he lifted a lid set into the top panel, and lowered the cage so that the children might look in. Inside, midway between floor and lid was a smaller box five inches long; a little hole at one end of this inner box gave access to the interior of the cage, and from it a miniature ladder slanted down to the sawdust strewn floor. In this box were a number of little heaving pink lumps, by the side of which crouched a brownish mouse. Her beady eyes peered up anxiously, while the whiskers on her muzzle trembled.