the ship, you were the only person at the table
who was not amused? She must have thought you had no sense of humour!"

Sam rose. "I think I'll be going," he said. "Good night!"

A man can bear just so much.

CHAPTER X

TROUBLE AT WINDLES

Sec. 1

Mr. Rufus Bennett stood at the window of the drawing-room of Windles,
looking out. From where he stood he could see all those natural and
artificial charms which had made the place so desirable to him when he
first beheld them. Immediately below, flower beds, bright with assorted
blooms, pressed against the ivied stone wall of the house. Beyond,
separated from these by a gravel pathway, a smooth lawn, whose green and
silky turf rivalled the lawns of Oxford colleges, stretched to a
picturesque shrubbery, not so dense as to withhold altogether from the
eye of the observer an occasional silvery glimpse of the lake that lay
behind it. To the left, through noble trees, appeared a white suggestion
of old stable yards; while to the right, bordering on the drive as it
swept round to a distant gate, nothing less than a fragment of a ruined
castle reared itself against a background of firs.

It had been this sensational fragment of Old England which had
definitely captured Mr. Bennett on his first visit to the place. He
could not have believed that the time would ever come when he could gaze
on it without any lightening of the spirits.

The explanation of his gloom was simple. In addition to looking at the
flower beds, the lawn, the shrubbery, the stable yard, and the castle,
Mr. Bennett was also looking at the fifth heavy shower that had fallen
since breakfast. This was the third afternoon of his tenancy. The first
day it had rained all the time. The second day it had rained from eight
till twelve-fifteen, from twelve-thirty till four, and from five till
eleven. And on this, the third day, there had been no intermission
longer than ten minutes. It was a trying Summer. Even the writers in the
daily papers seemed mildly surprised, and claimed that England had seen
finer Julys. Mr. Bennett, who had lived his life in a country of warmth
and sunshine, the thing affected in much the same way as the early days
of the Flood must have affected Noah. A first startled resentment had
given place to a despair too militant to be called resignation. And with
the despair had come a strong distaste for his fellow human beings,
notably and in particular his old friend Mr. Mortimer, who