"You?" asked Stella with a smile of surprise. Was he merely playing for
time, she wondered? But he had the air of contentment with which he
usually embarked upon his disquisitions.

"Yes. I do not consider our national pastime beneath a philosopher's
attention. I have formed two theories about the game."

"I am sure you have," Robert Pettifer interposed.

"And I have invented two improvements, though I admit at once that they
will have to wait until a more enlightened age than ours adopts them. In
the first place"--and Mr. Hazlewood flourished a forefinger in the
air--"the game ought to be played with a soft ball. There is at present a
suggestion of violence about it which the use of a soft ball would
entirely remove."

"Entirely," Mr. Pettifer agreed and his wife exclaimed impatiently:

"Rubbish, Harold, rubbish!"

Stella broke nervously into the conversation.

"Violence? Why even women play cricket, Mr. Hazlewood."

"I cannot, Stella," he returned, "accept the view that whatever women do
must necessarily be right. There are instances to the contrary."

"Yes. I come across a few of them in my office," Robert Pettifer said
grimly; and once more embarrassment threatened to descend upon the party.
But Mr. Hazlewood was off upon a favourite theme. His eyes glistened and
the object of the gathering vanished for the moment from his thoughts.

"And in the second place," he resumed, "the losers should be accounted to
have won the game."

"Yes, that must be right," said Pettifer. "Upon my word you are in form,
Hazlewood."

"But why?" asked Mrs. Pettifer.

Harold Hazlewood smiled upon her as upon a child and explained:

"Because by adopting that system you would do something to eradicate the
spirit of rivalry, the desire to win, the ambition to beat somebody else
which is at the bottom of half our national troubles."

"And all our national success," said Pettifer.

Hazlewood patted his brother-in-law upon the shoulder. He looked at him
indulgently. "You are a Tory, Robert," he said, and implied that argument
with such an one was mere futility.

He had still his hand upon Pettifer's shoulder when the door opened.
Stella saw by the change in his face that it was Thresk who was entering.
But she did not move.

"Ah," said Mr. Hazlewood. "Come over here and take a cup of tea."

Thresk came forward to the table. He seemed altogether unconscious that
the eyes of the two men were upon him.

"Thank you. I shou