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[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!”]

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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.

Some of the athletic events were open, like the Atlantic Sea, and some close, like the Conferences at Lympne, but very few of the visitors competed in any of them.  I don’t think any of us fancied our chances overmuch, but personally I was a little bitter about the three-mile bicycle race, because there were three prizes and only three competitors.  I am past my prime at this particular sport, but as it happened one of the three broke his gear-chain somewhere about the seventh lap, and it was a long time before he mended it and rode triumphantly past the finishing flag.  I felt then that I had missed what was probably my first and last chance of securing an Olympic palm.

The whole affair struck me as being very well managed; dull events, like the high jump and putting the shot, being held quietly in a corner by the hedge, whilst the really interesting things, like the sack race and the egg and spoon race, went on in the middle.  We used potatoes instead of eggs, but whether there was a system of handicapping according to the weight and age of the potatoes I was unable to determine.  I do feel confident, however, that that girl with the yellow hair and the striped skirt to whom the first prize was quite incorrectly awarded by the judges had put some treacle—­But there, I will be magnanimous.