task is to record facts as
they happened.

The morning sunlight fell pleasantly on the garden of Windles, turning
it into the green and amber Paradise which Nature had intended it to be.
A number of the local birds sang melodiously in the undergrowth at the
end of the lawn, while others, more energetic, hopped about the grass
in quest of worms. Bees, mercifully ignorant that, after they had worked
themselves to the bone gathering honey, the proceeds of their labour
would be collared and consumed by idle humans, buzzed industriously to
and fro and dived head foremost into flowers. Winged insects danced
sarabands in the sunshine. In a deck-chair under the cedar-tree Billie
Bennett, with a sketching-block on her knee, was engaged in drawing a
picture of the ruined castle. Beside her, curled up in a ball, lay her
Pekinese dog, Pinky-Boodles. Beside Pinky-Boodles slept Smith, the
bulldog. In the distant stable-yard, unseen but audible, a boy in
shirt-sleeves was washing the car and singing as much as a treacherous
memory would permit of a popular sentimental ballad.

You may think that was all. You may suppose that nothing could be added
to deepen the atmosphere of peace and content. Not so. At this moment,
Mr. Bennett emerged from the French windows of the drawing-room, clad in
white flannels and buckskin shoes, supplying just the finishing touch
that was needed.

Mr. Bennett crossed the lawn, and sat down beside his daughter. Smith,
the bulldog, raising a sleepy head, breathed heavily; but Mr. Bennett
did not quail. Since their last unfortunate meeting, relations of
distant, but solid, friendship had come to exist between pursuer and
pursued. Sceptical at first, Mr. Bennett had at length allowed himself
to be persuaded of the mildness of the animal's nature and the essential
purity of his motives; and now it was only when they encountered each
other unexpectedly round sharp corners that he ever betrayed the
slightest alarm. So now, while Smith slept on the grass, Mr. Bennett
reclined in the chair. It was the nearest thing modern civilisation has
seen to the lion lying down with the lamb.

"Sketching?" said Mr. Bennett.

"Yes," said Billie, for there were no secrets between this girl and her
father. At least, not many. She occasionally omitted to tell him some
such trifle as that she had met Samuel Marlowe on the previous morning
in a leafy lane, and intended to meet him again this afternoon, but
apart from that her