We all enjoyed the game course most, with the exception of Dickie.  The lad had finished his sausage, and mashed potato alone is not inspiring.  But that great man, Holder, noticed it in time, and he satisfied the child with a word-painting of the brown crisp skin of cooked goose.  Then we drank some magnificent wine.  Holder ransacked the English language for it.  A vivifying champagne.

But enough of food, or you will think we were gourmands.  None of us cared for any sweets after such a meal.  And that is what I like about the Holders:  with them enough is as good as the feast they will never have.

After dinner we smoked a very fine cigar in the imaginary conservatory which Holder has just run up, and I have rarely, if ever, heard a better description of men smoking cigars in a conservatory.  Next, Holder played me a fast game of billiards.  He allowed me to choose my own table, and I picked the most expensive in the catalogue.  Dickie marked for us.  Then he went to bed.  I heard his father whisper a most convincing description of eiderdowns and real wool blankets when he kissed him.  He is only a very little boy—­big blue eyes, you know, like a girl’s; they watered a little.  Excitement....

It was a clear moonlit night with a touch of frost in the air, so Mrs. Holder rang for the visionary footman, a good-looking, most willing, sensible man, according to Holder’s quick portrait of him, who piled up some great logs on a bank of coals of a positively fantastic size, and we gathered round to enjoy a run in the brand-new, latest model Rolls-Royce which is one of the special things which Holder will never possess in this world.  Ah, but she was a queen of cars, and the best of cars always run better at night.  I wonder why.  So smoothly silky, so dreamily sweet-running, a pouring of cream!  I wish I could convey to you the satin sound of her transmission, the low golden purr of her gears, the fanning of her velvet wings—­wheels, that is.  I would sooner ride in that verbal car of Holder’s than walk round the real backyard that is my own, unless I fall behind with the rent, as I begin to fear I shall....

Down the dreamy moon-drenched highways, across the magic silver-flecked moors, we climbed on the wings of the peregrine to the keen, cold uplands, soared awhile, then dropped to the warm and sheltered valley and so home again.  We felt the radiator, Holder and I, and it was quite cool. She will never boil on a stiff hill.  Mrs. Holder was glowing from her ride; for an instant she looked pink and pretty; she had lost that wistful pinched look.

I went inside for a phrase or so of Holder’s admirable idea of what cherry brandy should be.  We chatted for a little about the estate that he will never purchase, and then I left, having promised to go round there to-morrow for a little shooting.  It will be hot work among the pheasants if Holder has not lost his voice.

He and his wife came down the drive to the entrance-gates with me.