* * * * *

There was croquet after lunch,--a game of which I am a poor performer.
Phyllis Derrick and I played the professor and Tom Chase. Chase was a
little better than myself; the professor, by dint of extreme
earnestness and care, managed to play a fair game; and Phyllis was an
expert.

"I was reading a book," she said, as we stood together watching the
professor shaping at his ball at the other end of the lawn, "by an
author of the same surname as you, Mr. Garnet. Is he a relation of
yours?"

"My name is Jeremy, Miss Derrick."

"Oh, you wrote it?" She turned a little pink. "Then you must have--oh,
nothing."

"I couldn't help it, I'm afraid."

"Did you know what I was going to say?"

"I guessed. You were going to say that I must have heard your
criticisms in the train. You were very lenient, I thought."

"I didn't like your heroine."

"No. What is a 'creature,' Miss Derrick?"

"Pamela in your book is a 'creature,' " she replied unsatisfactorily.