* * * * *

[Illustration: _Customer._ "I SAY--DO YOU EVER PLAY ANYTHING BY REQUEST?"

_Delighted Musician._ "CERTAINLY, SIR."

_Customer._ "THEN I WONDER IF YOU'D BE SO GOOD AS TO PLAY A GAME OF
DOMINOES UNTIL I'VE FINISHED MY LUNCH!"]

* * * * *

SAND SPORTS.

Two or three hundred yards behind the sandhills, which seem to be deserted
but are really full of sudden hollows, with embarrassing little bathing
tents in them, the village sports have just been held. They took place in a
sloping grass field kindly lent for the occasion by Mr. Bates. This means
that you paid a shilling to enter the field, whereas on other days you can
picnic in it or play cricket in it without paying anything at all. Mr.
Bates is a kind of absentee landlord so far as we are concerned, for he is
the butcher at Framford, four miles away, and only brings the proceeds of
his butchery to us on Tuesdays and Fridays, which is the reason why on
Mondays and Thursdays one usually has eggs and bacon for dinner.

It was an interesting afternoon for many reasons, most of all perhaps
because many of the visitors saw each other for the first time in
clothes--in land clothes, I mean--and it is wonderful how much smarter some
of them looked than when popping red or brown faces, with lank wisps of
hair on them, out of the brine.