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 the new man: "You used to play tin soldiers together!"

"And Keble always won the battles, even if he had to violate the Hague conventions to do it!" Walter's tone was indulgent.

"Oh!" exclaimed Louise. "But he would break them so morally! Even the Hague would be fooled."

"The history of England in a nutshell," agreed Walter. "We played battles like Waterloo, and I had to be Napoleon to his Wellington."

"But you didn't mind really, old man, you know you didn't."

"Not a bit! The foundation on which true friendship rests is that one of the parties enjoys to beat, and the other rather enjoys being beaten."

"Walter has turned philosopher and poet and says clever things that you needn't believe at all."

"Oh, but I do believe him," said Louise quickly, alarmed at the extent to which she did. To cover it she held out her hands with an exuberant cordiality and drew them into the house.

The luncheon table was drawn near windows framed by yellow curtains which Louise had herself hemmed. Through them, beyond the young green plants in the window-boxes, beyond the broken trees that Keble called the Castor and Pollux group, from their resemblance to the pillars in the Roman Forum, the two mountains that bounded the end of the lake could be seen coming together in an enormous jagged