YOU know, the longer I live, the more I feel that the great wheeze in life is to be jolly well sure what you want and not let yourself be put off by pals who think they know better than you do. When I had announced at the Drones, my last day in the metropolis, that I was retiring to this secluded spot for an indeterminate period, practically everybody had begged me, you might say with tears in their eyes, not to dream of doing such a cloth-headed thing. They said I should be bored stiff. But I had carried on according to plan, and here I was, on the fifth morning of my visit, absolutely in the pink and with no regrets whatsoever.The sun was shining. The sky was blue. And London seemed miles away-which it was, of course. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that a great peace enveloped the soul. A thing I never know when I'm telling a story is how much scenery to bung in. I've asked one or two scriveners of my acquaintance, and their views differ. A fellow I met at a cocktail party in Bloomsbury said that he was all for describing kitchen sinks and frowsty bedrooms and squalor generally, but the beauties of Nature, no. Whereas, Freddie Oaker, of the Drones, who does tales of pure love for the weeklies under the pen-name of Alicia Seymour, once told me that he reckoned that flowery meadows in springtime alone were worth at least a hundred quid a year to him.
Personally, I've always rather barred long descriptions of the terrain, so I will be on the brief side. As I stood there that morning, what the eye rested on was the following. There was a nice little splash of garden, containing a bush, a tree, a couple of flower beds, a lily pond with a statue of a nude child with a bit of a tummy on him, and to the right a hedge. Across this hedge, Brinkley, my new man, was chatting with our neighbour. Police Sergeant ' Voules, who seemed to have looked in with a view to selling eggs. There was another hedge straight ahead, with the garden gate in it, an dover this one espied the placid waters of the harbour, which was much about the same as any other harbour, except that some time during the night a whacking great yacht had rolled up and cast anchor in it. And of all the objects under my ^nmediate advisement I noted this yacht with l@te most pleasure and approval.
White in •N^our, in size resembling a young liner, it lent ^iMftedded tone to the Chuffie Regis foreshore.
Well, such was the spreading prospect. Add a cat sniffing at a snail on the path and me at the door smoking a gasper, and you have the complete picture. No, I'm wrong. Not quite the complete picture, because I had left the old two-seater in the road, and I could ]just see the top part of it. And at this moment the summer stillness was broken by the tooting oi its horn, and I buzzed to the gate with all possible speed for fear some fiend in human shape was scratching my paint. Arriving at destination, I found a small boy in the front seat, pensively squeezing the bulb, and was about to administer one on the side of the head when I recognized Chuffy's cousin, Seabury, and stayed the hand. " Hallo," he said. " What ho," I replied. My manner was reserved. The memory of that lizard in my bed still lingered. I don't know if you have ever leaped between the sheets, all ready for a spot of sleep, and received an unforeseen lizard up the left pyjama leg ? It is an experience that puts its stamp on a man. And while, as I say, I had no legal proof that this young blighter had been the author of the outrage, I entertained suspicions that were tantamount to certainty. So now I not only spoke with a marked coldness but also gave him the fairly frosty eye. It didn't seem to ]ar him. He continued to
regard me with that supercilious gaze which had got him so disliked among the right-minded. He was a smallish, freckled kid with aeroplane ears, and he had a way of looking at you as if you were something he had run into in the course of a slumming trip. In my Rogues Gallery of repulsive small boys I suppose he Would come about third-not quite so bad as my Aunt Agatha's son. Young Thos., or Mr. Blumenfeld's Junior, but well ahead of little Sebastian Moon, my Aunt Dahlia's Bonzo, and the field. After staring at me for a moment as if he were thinking that I had changed for the worse since he last saw me, he spoke. „ " You're to come to lunch." " Is Chuffy back, then ? " " Yes." Well of course, if Chuffy had returned, I was at his disposal. I shouted over the hedge to Brinkley that I would be absent from the midday meal and climbed into the car and we rolled off. " When did he get back ? " " Last night." "
