In the merry days before war was thrust upon us, James Thompson was
an architect of distinction. Obviously an architect of distinction can
reduce the difficulty of laying out a tennis-court to an elementary
and puerile absurdity. For half-an-hour the demonstration was
carried on in the garden, and, after Private Thompson had twice been
threatened with arrest for using insubordinate language to a superior,
it was decided to finish the discussion in my study, assisted by the
softening influence of the Tantalus.

Not for a hundred pounds would I have ventured into the study.
I picked up _The Gardening Gazette_ and engrossed myself in an
interesting piece of scandal about the slug family.

Suddenly Margery appeared at the double.

"Do you know," I exclaimed excitedly, "it was the wireworm after all."

"Come on," Margery panted irrelevantly, "buck up and we can finish it
before they come out again."

In her hand she held a tape-measure and an official diagram of a
tennis-court.

Five minutes later the experts emerged from the house.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Nevin aggressively, "what have you been up to?"

"Oh," I replied, flicking over a page on weed-killers, "Margery and I
thought we had better find the remainder of the tennis-court while you