ndeavour to hook little
Trout.

Well, there's a programme for three weeks of heaven, sheer
Bliss, if you add to the scheme
Farm eggs and bacon and junket and Devonshire
Cream.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Customer._ "I SAY--DO YOU EVER PLAY ANYTHING BY REQUEST?"

_Delighted Musician._ "CERTAINLY, SIR."

_Customer._ "THEN I WONDER IF YOU'D BE SO GOOD AS TO PLAY A GAME OF
DOMINOES UNTIL I'VE FINISHED MY LUNCH!"]

* * * * *

SAND SPORTS.

Two or three hundred yards behind the sandhills, which seem to be deserted
but are really full of sudden hollows, with embarrassing little bathing
tents in them, the village sports have just been held. They took place in a
sloping grass field kindly lent for the occasion by Mr. Bates. This means
that you paid a shilling to enter the field, whereas on other days you can
picnic in it or play cricket in it without paying anything at all. Mr.
Bates is a kind of absentee landlord so far as we are concerned, for he is
the butcher at Framford, four miles away, and only brings the proceeds of
his butchery to us on Tuesdays and Fridays, which is the reason why on
Mondays and Thursdays one usually has eggs and bacon for dinner.

It was an interesting afternoon for many reasons, most of all perhaps
because many of the visitors saw each other for the first time in
clothes--in land clothes, I mean--and it is wonderful how much smarter some
of them looked than when popping red or brown faces, with lank wisps of
hair on them, out of the brine.

Some of the athletic events were open, like the Atlantic Sea, and some
close, like the Conferences at Lympne, but very few of the visitors
competed in any of them. I don't think any of us fancied our chances
overmuch, but personally I was a little bitter about the three-mile bicycle
race, because there were three prizes and only three competitors. I am past
my prime at this particular sport, but as it happened one of the three
broke his gear-chain somewhere about the seventh lap, and it was a long
time before he mended it and rode triumphantly past the finishing flag. I
felt then that I had missed what was probably my first and last chance of
securing an Olympic palm.

The whole affair struck me as being very well managed; dull events, like
the high jump and putting the shot, being held quietly in a corner by the
hedge, whilst the really interesting