of the maids came in.

'Oh, if you please,' she said, 'would you like any extra blankets on your
bed, sir?'

'Ah! thank you,' said Parkins. 'Yes, I think I should like one. It seems
likely to turn rather colder.'

In a very short time the maid was back with the blanket.

'Which bed should I put it on, sir?' she asked.

'What? Why, that one--the one I slept in last night,' he said, pointing
to it.

'Oh yes! I beg your pardon, sir, but you seemed to have tried both of
'em; leastways, we had to make 'em both up this morning.'

'Really? How very absurd!' said Parkins. 'I certainly never touched the
other, except to lay some things on it. Did it actually seem to have been
slept in?'

'Oh yes, sir!' said the maid. 'Why, all the things was crumpled and
throwed about all ways, if you'll excuse me, sir--quite as if anyone
'adn't passed but a very poor night, sir.'

'Dear me,' said Parkins. 'Well, I may have disordered it more than I
thought when I unpacked my things. I'm very sorry to have given you the
extra trouble, I'm sure. I expect a friend of mine soon, by the way--a
gentleman from Cambridge--to come and occupy it for a night or two. That
will be all right, I suppose, won't it?'

'Oh yes, to be sure, sir. Thank you, sir. It's no trouble, I'm sure,'
said the maid, and departed to giggle with her colleagues.

Parkins set forth, with a stern determination to improve his game.

I am glad to be able to report that he succeeded so far in this
enterprise that the Colonel, who had been rather repining at the prospect
of a second day's play in his company, became quite chatty as the morning
advanced; and his voice boomed out over the flats, as certain also of our
own minor poets have said, 'like some great bourdon in a minster tower'.

'Extraordinary wind, that, we had last night,' he said. 'In my old home
we should have said someone had been whistling for it.'

'Should you, indeed!' said Perkins. 'Is there a superstition of that kind
still current in your part of the country?'

'I don't know about superstition,' said the Colonel. 'They believe in it
all over Denmark and Norway, as well as on the Yorkshire coast; and my
experience is, mind you, that there's generally something at the bottom
of what these country-folk hold to, and have held to for generations. But
it's your drive' (or whatever it might have been: the golfing reader will
have to imagine appropriate digressions at the proper intervals).

When conver