“Have to do my fourteen miles before lunch,” he said.  “You haven’t seen Manning about, have you?”

“He isn’t here,” said Mr. Britling, and it seemed to Mr. Direck that there was the faintest ambiguity in this reply.

“Have to go alone, then,” said Colonel Rendezvous.  “They told me that he had started to come here.”

“I shall motor over to Bramley High Oak for your Boy Scout festival,” said Mr. Britling.

“Going to have three thousand of ’em,” said the Colonel.  “Good show.”

His steely eyes seemed to search the cover of Mr. Britling’s garden for the missing Manning, and then he decided to give him up.  “I must be going,” he said.  “So long.  Come up!”

A well-disciplined dog came to heel, and the lean figure had given Mr. Direck a semi-military salutation and gone upon its way.  It marched with a long elastic stride; it never looked back.

“Manning,” said Mr. Britling, “is probably hiding up in my rose garden.”

“Curiously enough, I guessed from your manner that that might be the case,” said Mr. Direck.

“Yes.  Manning is a London journalist.  He has a little cottage about a mile over there”—­Mr. Britling pointed vaguely—­“and he comes down for the week-ends.  And Rendezvous has found out he isn’t fit.  And everybody ought to be fit.  That is the beginning and end of life for Rendezvous.  Fitness.  An almost mineral quality, an insatiable activity of body, great mental simplicity.  So he takes possession of poor old Manning and trots him for that fourteen miles—­at four miles an hour.  Manning goes through all the agonies of death and damnation, he half dissolves, he pants and drags for the first eight or ten miles, and then I must admit he rather justifies Rendezvous’ theory.  He is to be found in the afternoon in a hammock suffering from blistered feet, but otherwise unusually well.  But if he can escape it, he does.  He hides.”

“But if he doesn’t want to go with Rendezvous, why does he?” said Mr. Direck.

“Well, Rendezvous is accustomed to the command of men.  And Manning’s only way of refusing things is on printed forms.  Which he doesn’t bring down to Matching’s Easy.  Ah! behold!”

Far away across the lawn between two blue cedars there appeared a leisurely form in grey flannels and a loose tie, advancing with manifest circumspection.

“He’s gone,” cried Britling.

The leisurely form, obviously amiable, obviously a little out of condition, became more confident, drew nearer.

“I’m sorry to have missed him,” he said cheerfully.  “I thought he might come this way.  It’s going to be a very warm day indeed.  Let us sit about somewhere and talk.

“Of course,” he said, turning to Direck, “Rendezvous is the life and soul of the country.”