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 foot bridge, and I drew back to
let her pass.

As it is the privilege of woman to make the first sign of recognition,
I said nothing. I merely lifted my hat in a noncommitting 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.

"Miss Derrick?"

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

"You are very kind," I said, realizing 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-by."

"Good-by."

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 he went
Dorkings and Cochin Chinas which he had cured of diseases generally
fatal, with, 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
proposed to leave exclusively to Ukridge and the hired retainer. As I
had a slight headache, a visit to the Cob would, I thought, do me
good. I had missed my bath that morning, and was in need of a breath
of sea air.

It was high tide, and there was deep water on three sides of the Cob.

In a small boat in the offing Professor Derrick appeared, fishing