Waddington drained his glass.

“They say it’s his wife who pushes him on so,” he remarked.

Mr. Burton’s wine went suddenly flat.  He drank it but without enjoyment.  Then he rose to his feet.

“Well, so long, Waddington, old chap,” he said.  “I expect the missis is waiting for me.”

Mrs. Burton was certainly waiting for her husband.  She was sitting back among the cushions of her Sixty horse-power Daimler, wrapped in a motoring coat of the latest fashion, her somewhat brilliant coloring only partially obscured by the silver-gray veil which drooped from her motor bonnet.  Burton took his place beside her almost in silence, and they glided off.  She looked at him curiously.

“Meeting go off all right?” she asked, a little sharply.

“Top hole,” Mr. Burton replied.

“Then what are you so glum about?” she demanded, suspiciously.  “You’ve got nothing to worry about that I can see.”

“Nothing at all,” Mr. Burton admitted.

“Very good report of Alfred came second post,” Mrs. Burton continued.  “They say he’ll be fit to enter Harrow next year.  And an invitation to dine, too, with Lady Goldstein.  We’re getting on, Alfred.  The only thing now is that country house.  I wish we could find something to suit us.”

“If we keep on looking,” Burton remarked, “we are bound to come across something sooner or later.  If not, I must build.”

“I’m all for building,” Mrs. Burton declared.  “I don’t care for mouldy old ruins, with ivy and damp places upon the walls.  I like something fine and spick and span and handsome, with a tower to it, and a long straight drive that you can see down to the road; plenty of stone work about the windows, and good square rooms.  As for the garden, well, let that come.  We can plant a lot of small trees about, and lay down a lawn.  I don’t care about other folks’ leavings in houses, and a lot of trees around a place always did put me off.  Have you told him where to go to?”

Burton shook his head.

“I just told him to drive about thirty or forty miles into the country,” he said.  “It doesn’t matter in what direction, does it?  We may see something that will suit us.”

The car, with its splendid easy motion, sped noiselessly through the suburbs and out into the country.  It seemed to Mr. Burton that he must have dozed.  He had been up late the night before, and for several nights before that.  He was a little puffy about the cheeks and his eyes were not so bright as they had been.  He had developed a habit of dozing off in odd places.  When he awoke, he sat up with a start.  He had been dreaming.  Surely this was a part of the dream!  The car was going very slowly indeed.  On one side of him was a common, with bushes of flaming gorse and clumps of heather, and little ragged plantations of pine trees; and on his right, a low, old-fashioned house, a lawn of velvet, and a great cedar tree; a walled garden with straight,