last work, had expressed a
polite hope that he would continue to do) was country air. A farmhouse
by the sea somewhere ... cows ... spreading boughs ... rooks ...
brooks ... cream. In London the day stretches before a man, if he has
no regular and appointed work to do, like a long, white, dusty road.
It seems impossible to get to the end of it without vast effort. But
in the country every hour has its amusements. Up with the lark.
Morning dip. Cheery greetings. Local color. Huge breakfast. Long
walks. Flannels. The ungirt loin. Good, steady spell of work from
dinner till bedtime. The prospect fascinated him. His third novel was
already in a nebulous state in his brain. A quiet week or two in the
country would enable him to get it into shape.

He took from the pocket of his blazer a letter which had arrived some
days before from an artist friend of his who was on a sketching tour
in Devonshire and Somerset. There was a penciled memorandum on the
envelope in his own handwriting:

_Mem._ Might work K. L.'s story about M. and the W--s's into comic
yarn for one of the weeklies.

He gazed at this for a while, with a last hope that in it might be
contained the germ of something which would enable him to turn out a
morning's work; but having completely forgotten who K. L. was, and
especially what was his (or her) story about M., whoever he (or she)
might be, he abandoned this hope and turned to the letter in the
envelope.

The earlier portions of the letter dealt tantalizingly with the
scenery. "Bits," come upon by accident at the end of disused lanes and
transferred with speed to canvas, were described concisely but with
sufficient breadth to make Garnet long to see them for himself. There
were brief _resumes_ of dialogues between Lickford (the writer) and
weird rustics. The whole letter breathed of the country and the open
air. The atmosphere of Garnet's sitting room seemed to him to become
stuffier with every sentence he read.

The postscript interested him.

"... By the way, at Yeovil I came across an old friend of yours.
Stanley Featherstonhaugh Ukridge, of all people. As large as
life--quite six foot two, and tremendously filled out. I thought he
was abroad. The last I heard of him was that he had started for Buenos
Ayres in a cattle-ship. It seems he has been in England sometime. I
met him in the refreshment room at Yeovil station. I was waiting for a
down train; he had changed on his way to town. As I opened the