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THE GOLDEN AGE 'Your tea is in the garden,' she said severely, as if she were correcting a faulty emendation. 'I've put some cakes and things for the little gentleman; and you'd better drink it before it gets cold.'

He waved her off and continued his stride, brandishing an aorist over my devoted head. The housekeeper waited unmoved till there fell a moment's break in his descant; and then, 'You'd better drink it before it gets cold,' she observed again, impassively. The wretched man cast a deprecating look at me. 'Perhaps a little tea would be rather nice,' he observed feebly; and to my great relief he led the way into the garden. I looked about for the little gentleman, but, failing to discover him, I concluded he was absent-minded too, and attacked the 'cakes and things' with no misgivings.

After a most successful and most learned tea a something happened which, small as I was, never quite shook itself out of my memory. To us at parley in an arbour over the high road, there entered, slouching into view, a dingy 116