The midland journal., 1915-11-12


the bush as though the unsound floor
had changed under their feet into a
magic carpet.
.'You simply have 1t put down to the
mans account in the station books.
Nobody keeps ready money up at the
bush, not even the price of plug like
I this; but the chap I'm telling you
about Il can see him now, with his
great red beard and freckled fists) he
swore was charging him for half a
pound more than he'd ever had. We
fought for twenty minutes behind the
wood-heap; then he gave me best, but
/ had to turn in till could see again
you don't mean that he"
Blanche had looked rather disgust.
ed the moment before; now she was
all truculent suspense and indigna.
ton.
Beat me?" he cried Good Lord,
no; but there was none too much in
it."
Fires died down in her hazel eyes,
lay lambent as soft moonlight, flick.
cred into laughter before he had seen
the fire.
I'm afraid you're a very dangerous
person" said Blanche.
You've got to be, J" he assured her;
''it's the only way. Don't take word
from anybody, unless you mean him to
wipe his boots on you. soon found
that out. I'd have given something to
have learned the noble art before !
went out. Did ever tell you how it
was first came across old Venus
Potts?"
He had told her at great length, to
the exclusion of about every other
topic, in the second of the annual let
tiers; and throughout the series the in
evitable name of Venus Potts had sell
dom cropped up without some allusion
to that Homeric encounter. But it was
well worth while having 1t all over
again with the intricate and picturesque
embroidery of a tongue far mightier
than the pen hitherto employed upon
the incident. Poor Blanche had almost
to hold her nose over the primary
delightful, and Cazalet himself made
most gallant and engaging figure as
he sat on the sill and reeled it out.
Twenty minutes later, and old Venus
Potts was still on the magic tapis.
though Cazalet had dropped his boast
ing for curiously humble, eager and
yet Intellectual vein.
"Old Venus Potts!" he kept ejacu-
lating. 'You couldn't help liking him.
And he'd like you, my word!"
is his wife nice?" Blanche wanted
to know; but she was looking so in
tently out her window, at the opposite
end of the bow to Cazalet's, that a
man of the wider world might have
thought of something else to talk
about.
Out her window she looked past a
willow that had been part Of the old
life, in the direction of an equally
typical silhouette of patient anglers
anchored in a punt; they had not
raised rod between them during all
this time that Blanche had been out in
Australia; but as matter of fact she
never saw them, since, vastly to the
credit of Cazalet's descriptive powers.
she was out in Australia still
Nelly Potts?" he said "Oh, a jolly
good sort; you'd be awful pals"
Should we?" said Blanche, just
smiling at her invisible anglers.
II know you would" he assured her
with immense conviction. "Of course
she can't do the things you do; but
she can ride, my word! So she ought
to, when she's lived there all her life.
The rooms aren't much, but the yeran-
das are what count most: they're bet
ter than any rooms"
She was still out there, cultivating
Nelly Potts on very deep veranda,
though her straw hat and straw hair
remained in contradictory evidence
against very dirty window on the
Middlesex bank of the Thames. 1t
was shame of the September sun
to show the dirt as 1t was doing; not
only was there great steady pool of
sunshine on the unspeakable floor, but
a doddering reflection from the river
on the disreputable ceiling. Cazalet
looked rather desperately from one to
the other, and both the calm pool and
the rough were broken by shadows.
one more impressionistic than the
other, of straw hat over a stack of
straw hair, that had not gone out to
Australia-yet.
And of course just then a step
sounded outside somewhere on some
gravel. Confound those caretakers!
What were they doing, prowling
about?
II say, Blanchie!" he blurted out. II
do believe you'd like 1t out there,
sportswoman like you! believe
you'd take to it like duck to water"
CTO BE CONTINUED)
"Pope's Slze."
curious item in the trade slang of