The quest took me to a pleasant semi-rural neighbourhood where
there was room for gardens with the borders edged with the nice soft
yellow-tinted box, and rose walks, and dainty little arbours, and
fandangled appurtenances which amateur gardeners love with perfect
justification.

And there was Dalrymple. I won't deceive you. I recognised him on
the other side of a low oak fence. He was wearing an old hat of the
texture of the bit of headgear which the man who impersonates Napoleon
at the music-hall doubles up and plays tricks with, only Dalrymple's
hat had obviously been white and was now going green and other colours
with wear and tear.

And wherever Dalrymple went a small cherub in a holland frock went
too. The cherub would be about five. Dalrymple was fashioning a
hen-coop out of two or three soap-boxes. Both he and the cherub ceased
activities when I hailed and approached; and I stopped to dinner.
Dalrymple told me he rather fancied he could wangle me a bungalow.

"I know the agent chap," he said, as we sampled a very pleasant glass
of port. "Of course they want to keep it fairly dark or we should be
swamped. I have taken a lot of trouble myself, you know, and am just
starting gardening lectures at our club."

So he went on--the house, his new roses, the hens, the jam his wife
made, the idea he had for a winter garden in the interests of his
wife's mother, who could then take the air in her Bath-chair.

"But," I said, "you want to sweep everything away. You aim at sending