combination--a man, a girl, and a dog--a dog, a
girl, and a man. This has been going on for ages, and will to the end of
time.

On these mornings William and I have our bath early--ahead of the crowd
really, who generally arrive two hours after sunrise and keep up the
pace until the last train leaves for Paddington. This bath is at the
end of one of the teacup spillways, and is called the Weir. There is a
plateau, a plunge down some twenty feet into a deep pool, and the usual
surroundings of fresh morning air, gay tree-tops, and the splash of cool
water sparkling in the sunlight.

To-day as my boat grated on the gravel my eyes fell on a young English
lord who was holding the centre of the stage in the sunlight. He was
dressed from head to foot in a skin-tight suit of underwear which had
been cut for him by a Garden-of-Eden tailor. He was just out of the
water--a straight, well-built, ruddy-skinned fellow--every inch a man!
What birth and station had done for him would become apparent when
his valet began to hand him his Bond Street outfit. The next instant
William stood beside him. Then there came a wriggle about the
shoulders, the slip of a buckle, and he was overboard and out again
before my lord had discarded his third towel.

I fell to thinking.

Naked they were equals. That was the way they came into the world and
that's the way they would go out. And yet within the hour my lord would
be back to his muffins and silver service, with two flunkies behind
his chair, and William would be swabbing out a boat or poling me home
through the pond lilies.

But why?--I kept asking myself. A totally idiotic and illogical
question, of course. Both were of an age; both would be a joy to a
sculptor looking for modern gods with which to imitate the Greek ones.
Both were equal in the sight of their Maker. Both had served their
country--my lord, I learned later, being one of the first to draw a bead
on Spion Kop close enough to be of any use--and both were honest--at
least William was--and the lord must have been.

There is no answer--never can be. And yet the picture of the two as they
stood glistening in the sunlight continues to rise in my memory, and
with it always comes this same query--one which will never down--Why
should there be the difference?

*****

But the summer is moving on apace. There is another Inn and another
William--or rather, there was one several hundred years ago before he
went off crusading. It is