one can't solve it at
all. However, I copied down the position and said I'd glance at it....
At eleven that night I rose from my glance, decided that Herbert's
problem was the more immediately pressing, and took it to bed with me.

I was lunching with William next day, and I told him about the
subaltern. He dashed at it lightheartedly and made the answer seventeen.

"Seventeen what?" I said.

"Well, whatever we're talking about. I think you'll find it's seventeen
all right. But look here, my son, here's a golf problem for you. A. is
playing B. At the fifth hole A. falls off the tee into a pond----"

I forget how it went on.

When I got home to dinner, after a hard day with the subaltern, I found
a letter from Norah waiting for me.

"I hear from Mr. Carey," she wrote, "that you're keen on problems.
Here's one I have cut out of our local paper. Do have a shot at it. The
answer ought to be eight miles an hour."

Luckily, however, she forgot to enclose the problem. For by this time,
what with Herbert's subaltern, Carey's pawn, and a cistern left me by an
uncle who was dining with us that night, I had more than enough to
distract me.

And so the business has gone on. The news that I am preparing a
collection of interesting and tricky problems for a new _Encylopaedia_
has got about among my friends. Everybody who writes to me tells me of a
relation of his who has been shearing sheep or rowing against the stream
or dealing himself four aces. People who come to tea borrow a box of
wooden matches and beg me to remove one match and leave a perfect
square. I am asked to do absurd things with pennies....

Meanwhile Herbert has forgotten both the problem and the girl. Three
evenings later he shared his Hollandaise sauce with somebody in yellow
(as luck would have it) and she changed the subject by wondering if he
read DICKENS. He is now going manfully through _Bleak House_--a chapter
a night--and when he came to visit me to-day he asked me if I had ever
heard of the man.

However I was not angry with him, for I had just made it come to "three
cows." It is a cow short, but it is nearer than I have ever been before,
and I think I shall leave it at that. Indeed, both the doctor and the
nurse say that I had better leave it at that.

A. A. M.

* * * * *

A SEASONABLE BEVERAGE.

Great charm hath tea--some fragrant blend;
Sipped with a fair and festive friend;

And even milk hath f