indly interest in their ailing
families.

The path to Up Lyme lies across deep-grassed meadows. At intervals it
passes over a stream by means of a footbridge. The stream curls through
the meadows like a snake.

And at the first of these bridges I met Phyllis.

I came upon her quite suddenly. The other end of the bridge was hidden
from my view. I could hear somebody coming through the grass, but not
till I was on the bridge did I see who it was. We reached the bridge
simultaneously. She was alone. She carried a sketching-block. All nice
girls sketch a little.

There was room for one alone on the footbridge, and I drew back to let
her pass.

It being the privilege of woman to make the first sign of recognition,
I said nothing. I merely lifted my hat in a non-committing fashion.

"Are you going to cut me, I wonder?" I said to myself. She answered the
unspoken question as I hoped it would be answered.

"Mr. Garnet," she said, stopping at the end of the bridge. A pause.

"I couldn't tell you so before, but I am so sorry this has happened."

"Oh, thanks awfully," I said, realising as I said it the miserable
inadequacy of the English language. At a crisis when I would have given
a month's income to have said something neat, epigrammatic, suggestive,
yet withal courteous and respectful, I could only find a hackneyed,
unenthusiastic phrase which I should have used in accepting an
invitation from a bore to lunch with him at his club.

"Of course you understand my friends--must be my father's friends."

"Yes," I said gloomily, "I suppose so."

"So you must not think me rude if I--I----"

"Cut me," said I, with masculine coarseness.

"Don't seem to see you," said she, with feminine delicacy, "when I am
with my father. You will understand?"

"I shall understand."

"You see,"--she smiled--"you are under arrest, as Tom says."

Tom!

"I see," I said.

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

I watched her out of sight, and went on to interview Mr. Leigh.

We had a long and intensely uninteresting conversation about the
maladies to which chickens are subject. He was verbose and reminiscent.
He took me over his farm, pointing out as we went Dorkings with pasts,
and Cochin Chinas which he had cured of diseases generally fatal on, as
far as I could gather, Christian Science principles.

I left at last with instructions to paint the throats of the stricken
birds with turpentine--a task imagination boggled at, and one which I