undly miserable." He resolutely turned his back on the photo.
"I'm playing a little game this afternoon, most motherly of women.
Incidentally it's been played before--but it never loses its charm
or--its danger. . . ." He gave a short laugh. "My first card is your
tea. Toast, Mrs. Green, covered with butter supplied by your sister in
Devonshire. Hot toast in your priceless muffin dish--running over with
butter: and wortleberry jam. . . . Can you do this great thing for me?"

Mrs. Green nodded her head. "The butter only came this morning, Mr.
Vane, sir. And I've got three pounds of wortleberry jam left. . . ."

"Three pounds should be enough," said Vane after due deliberation.

"And then I've got a saffron cake," went on the worthy woman. "Fresh
made before it was sent on by my sister. . . ."

"Say no more, Mrs. Green. We win--hands down--all along the line. Do
you realise that fair women and brave men who venture out to tea in
London to-day have to pay half a crown for a small dog biscuit?" Vane
rubbed his hands together. "After your tea, and possibly during it--I
shall play my second card--Binks. Now I appeal to you--Could any girl
with a particle of natural feeling consent to go on living away from
Binks?"

The Accursed Thing emitted a mournful hoot, as Binks, hearing his name
spoken, raised his head and looked up at his master. His tail thumped
the floor feverishly, and his great brown eyes glowed with a mute
inquiry. "To walk, or not to walk"--that was the question. The answer
was apparently in the negative, for the moment at any rate, and he
again returned to the attack.

"You see my guile, Mrs. Green," said Vane. "Softened by toast,
floating in Devonshire butter and covered with wortleberry jam;
mellowed by saffron cake--Binks will complete the conquest. Then will
come the crucial moment. No one, not even she, can part me from my
dog. To have Binks--she must have me. . . . What do you think of
it--as a game only, you know?"

Mrs. Green laughed. "I surely do hope you're successful, my dear," she
said, and she laid a motherly hand on his arm. In moments of extreme
feeling she sometimes reverted to the language of her fathers, with its
soft West Country burr. . . . "When Green come courtin' me, he just
tuk me in tu his arms, and give me a great fat little kiss. . . ."

"And, by Jove, Mrs. Green, he was a damn lucky fellow to be able to do
it," cried Vane, taking the kindly old hand in