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“The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement,
and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,” announced

Framton, who laboured under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers
and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one’s ailments and
infirmities, their cause and cure. “On the matter of diet they are not so much in
agreement,” he continued.

“No?” said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last
moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention but not to what Framton
was saying.

“Here they are at last!” she cried. “Just in time for tea, and don’t they look as if they
were muddy up to the eyes!”

Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to
convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open
window with a dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton
swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.

In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the
window, they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally
burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept

close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice
chanted out of the dusk: “I said, Bertie, why do you bound?”

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The English Carnival-6