You needn't believe this. The others didn't when I told them.


THE SPREADING WALNUT TREE

We were having breakfast in the garden with the wasps, and Peter was enlarging on the beauties of the country round his new week-end cottage.

"Then there's Hilderton," he said; "that's a lovely little village, I'm told. We might explore it to-morrow."

Celia woke up suddenly.

"Is Hilderton near here?" she asked in surprise. "But I often stayed there when I was a child."

"This was years ago, when Edward the Seventh was on the throne," I explained to Mrs. Peter.

"My grandfather," went on Celia, "lived at Hilderton Hall."