with them covered
Wedderburn's white-paneled walls after he had removed the carefully hung
Durers to the bathroom. This transference wasted a good deal of time,
but gave him enough amusement when Wedderburn arrived to justify the
operation. The pictures all disposed, he called for a carpenter to hang
Grainger's triumphal oars and Lonsdale's hunting trophies of masks, pads
and brushes, and surveyed with considerable satisfaction the
accumulative effect of the great room now characterized by their joint
possessions. Michael was admiring his work when Lonsdale arrived and
greeted him boisterously.

"Hullo! I say, are we all straight? How topping! But wait a bit. I've
got something that's going to put the jolly old lid on this jolly old
room. What's the name of the joker who keeps these digs? Macpherson?"

He shouted from the landing to the ex-cook.

"I say, send up the packing-case that's waiting for me downstairs."

Michael inquired what was inside.

"Wait a bit, my son," said the beaming owner. "I've got something in
there that's going to make old Wedders absolutely green. I've thought
this out. I told my governor I was going into digs with some of the
aesthetic push and didn't want to be cut out, so he's lent me this."

"What on earth is it?" Michael asked on a note of ambiguous welcome.

The packing-case shaped like a coffin had been set down on the floor by
the ex-cook and his slave. Lonsdale was wrenching off the top.

"I had a choice between a mummy and a what d'ye call it, and I chose the
what d'ye call it," said Lonsdale.

He had torn the last piece of the cover away, and lying in straw was
revealed the complete armor of a Samurai.

"Rum-looking beggar. Worth twenty of those rotten statues of
Wedderburn's. It was a present to the governor from somebody in the
East, but as I promised not to go to dances in it, he lent it to me.
Rather sporting of him, what? Where shall we put him?"

"I vote we hide it till this evening," suggested Michael, "and then put
it in Wedder's bed. He'll think he's in the wrong room."

"Ripping!" cried Lonsdale. "In pyjamas, what?"

That Japanese warrior never occupied the aesthetic niche that Lord
Cleveden from his son's proposal may have thought he would occupy.
Otherwise he played an important part in the life of Two Hundred and
Two. Never did any visitor come to stay for the week-end, but Sammy, as
he was soon called, was set to warm his bed. To Lonsdale, returning home