I am a methodical person, and I like to do the same things at the same seasons. When it comes to revisiting the place of my birth, marriage and, I hope, interment, I make a practice of going to Baronrigg for Easter, Buckholm for the August cricket week, and The Heughs for the woodcock. On this particular occasion I had travelled from King’s Cross by the early morning express—it leaves at five o’clock, and is the best train in the day, if only people knew about it—with the result that by four o’clock in the afternoon I found myself rumbling along in the Craigfoot station fly, in lovely, summer weather, _en route_ for the Buckholm cricket week. Lady Christina, whose foes—and their name is legion, for they are many—accuse her of parsimony, does not usually send the motor to the station to meet unencumbered males. She expects such guests to cover the last stage of the journey at their own charges and, in addition, to share the conveyance with such parcels and oddments as may be lying in the station office consigned to Buckholm. On this occasion Mr. Turnbull, the station master, apologetically packed me into the fly in company with half a sheep and three bright new zinc buckets, freshly arrived from the stores in Edinburgh. In addition to my personal luggage, I was laden with a limp, damp package, smelling to heaven of fish, which had borne me noisome company all the way from my flat in Jermyn Street, having been delivered there by an accomplice of Lady Christina’s the night before my departure, with the information that her ladyship had signified my willingness to convey it to Buckholm. But things might have been worse. Lady Christina had played this fish trick upon me last year as well. (It is one of her most cherished economies.) On that occasion the fish was delivered at my flat five minutes after I had left for Scotland. It was marked "Very Important"; so the lift boy, a conscientious but unimaginative youth, sent for the pass-key and carefully deposited the package in my hall cupboard. I found it there, quite safe, when I returned from Scotland, three weeks later. The first warning that all was not well came to me when my equipage drew up, to a symphonic accompaniment of rattling buckets, at the lodge gates of Buckholm. These were held, like the bridge across the Tiber upon a famous occasion, by a resolute trio composed of Mackellar, the under-gardener, and Mesdames Elspeth and Maggie Mackellar, Mackellar’s daughters, aged about fourteen. Horatius Codes (Mackellar) informed me that by her ladyship’s orders it was "hauf-a-croon to get in," adding (quite incomprehensibly at the moment) that it was "on account of the Feet for Charity."