Suddenly, however, he overheard the gardener mentioning a murder which had been committed on Wimbledon Common, a fine tract of wild jungle and rolling prairie, that lay across the main road.  Without waiting to prosecute inquiries which would have told him that, although the confession was only in the morning papers, the murder was twenty years old, he escaped unseen and set his little white figure on a walk through the common.  He was out to see the blood.

But, for a birthday, it was a disappointing morning.  He discovered for the first time that Wimbledon Common occupied an interminable expanse of country; and really there was nothing unusual this morning about its appearance, or about the looks of the people whom he passed.  So he gave up his quest and returned homeward.  Then it was that his lazy eyes looked down a narrow, leafy lane that ran along the high wall of his own garden.  Now all Wimbledon suspects that this lane was designed by the Corporation as a walk for lovers.  There is evidence of the care and calculation that one spends on a chicken-run.  For the Corporation, knowing the practice of lovers, has placed in the shady recesses of the lane a seat where these comical people can intertwine.  At the sight of the lane and the seat, Master Pennybet immediately decided how he would occupy his afternoon.  He would move that seat along his garden wall, till it rested beneath some ample foliage where he could lie hidden.  Then he would wait the romantic moments of the evening.

This idea proved so exciting that the luncheon of which he partook was (for a birthday) regrettably small.  And no sooner was it finished than he rushed into the lane, and addressed his splendid muscles to removing the seat.

To begin with he tried pushing.  This failed.  The more he pushed the more his end of the seat went up into the air, while the other remained fast in the ground.  The only time he succeeded in making the seat travel at all it went so fast that it laid him on his stomach in the lane.  So he tried pulling from the other end.  This was only partially successful.  The seat moved towards him with jerks, at one time arriving most damnably on his shins, and at another throwing him into a sitting position on to the ground.  And there is a portion of small boys which is very sensitive to stony ground.  At these repeated checks the natural child in Mr. Pennybet caused his eyes to become moist, whereupon the strong and unconquerable man in him choked back a sob of temper, and pulled the seat with a passionate determination.  I tell you, such indomitable grit will always get its way, and the seat was well lodged against Mr. Pennybet’s wall and beneath his green fastness, before the afternoon blushed into the lovers’ hour.  He returned into his garden, and, climbing up the wall by means of the mantling ivy, reached his chosen observation-post.  Through curtains of greenery he watched the arrival of a pair of lovers, and held his breath, as they seated themselves beneath him.