“I'm sure you are really,” said Mrs. Midgeholme, unwilling to think ill of a fellow-creature. Her eyes, which, from their slight protuberance, bore a resemblance to those of her dogs, ran over him appraisingly. “I expect you're off to the Haswells',” she said sapiently. “You're a great tennis-player, aren't you?”

Mr. Drybeck disclaimed, but felt the description to be just. In his youth he had spent his every summer holiday competing in tournaments, and to his frequent success the row of trophies upon the mantelshelf in his dining-room bore testimony. His style of play was old-fashioned, like everything else about him, but the young men who considered him a desiccated exponent of pat-ball nevertheless found him a difficult adversary to beat. He was by profession a solicitor, the last surviving member of a firm long-established in the neighbouring town of Bellingham. He had never married, was extremely precise in all his ways, and disliked nearly every form of modern progress: a circumstance which possibly accounted for the sadly diminishing numbers of his clients. The older members of the community amongst which he had lived all his life remained faithful to him, but the younger men seemed to prefer the methods employed by his rival and bete noire, Mr. Sampson Warrenby, an upstart of no more than fifteen years' standing in the district. Sampson Warrenby's rapidly expanding business, at first a small thorn in Mr. Drybeck's flesh, was fast assuming the proportions of a menace; and since the day, just after the War ended, when he had had the bad taste to move his private residence from Bellingham to the hitherto select village of Thornden, it had become impossible for the indignant Mr. Drybeck to continue to be socially unaware of his existence. He had bought a house in the lane which debouched on to the main Bellingham road at a point almost opposite Mr. Drybeck's small but ancestral home.

“Alas, my, tennis days are over!” proclaimed Mrs. Midgeholme. “But you'll meet my Lion.”