,
"You're making two, now." He described Martley and the immense lake.
"House stands high in beech woods, but is cut out to the south. It
heads a valley--lawns on three sides, smooth as billiard tables--then
the lake with a marble lip--and steps--broad and low steps, in flights
of eight. Very good, you know. You shall see it."

Lucy wanted to know, "How big was the lake, really."

Urquhart said, "It looked a mile--but that's the art of the thing.
Really, it's two hundred and fifty yards. Much better than a jab in
the eye with a blunt stick. I did it by drainage, and a dam. Took a
year to get the water up. When a hunted stag took to it and swam
across, I felt that I'd done something. Fishing? I should think so.
And a bathing-house in a wooded corner--in a cane-brake of bamboos.
You'll like it."

Miss Bacchus said, "I don't believe a word of it;" but he seemed not
to hear her.

"When will you come and see it?" he asked Lucy.

She agreed that see it she must, if only to settle whether it existed
or not. "You see that Miss Bacchus has no doubts."

Urquhart said, "She never has--about anything. She is fixed in
certainty like a bee in amber. A dull life."

"Bless you, Jimmy," she said, "I thrive on it--and you'll never
thrive."

"Pooh!" said Urquhart, "what you call thriving I call degradation.
What! you snuggle in there out of the draughts--and then somebody
comes along and rubs you, and picks up bits of paper with you." His
good spirits made the thing go--and James's eyeglass prevailed not
against it.

But Urquhart's real triumph was at dessert--Lancelot sedately by his
mother; between her and the Judge, who briskly made way for him.
Lancelot in his Eton jacket took on an air of precocious, meditative
wisdom infinitely diverting to a man who reflects upon boys--and, no
doubt, infinitely provocative.

His coming broke up the talk and made one of those momentous pauses
which are sometimes paralysing to a table. This one was so, and even
threatened the neighbouring island. Upon it broke the voice of
Urquhart talking to Mabel Corbet.

"I was out in Corfu in 1906," he was heard to say; "I was in fact in
the bath, when one of my wives came to the door, and said that there
was a Turk in the almond-tree. I got a duck-gun which I had and went
out--" Lancelot's eyes, fixed and pulsing, interdicted him. They held
up the monologue. In his hand was a robust apple; but that was
forgotten.

"I say," he said, "have you go