They bought a bit of the beach for a trifle of money.  They built a boat-house, of which the upper half was one long dormitory, with a great balcony at the end over the water which served as kitchen and dining-hall.  The ground floor was the lake itself, and each man who could buy a boat tethered it there.  The property, boats excepted, was in common.  By and by they bought a field in which they grew vegetables; later they bought two cows and a pasture.  The produce of the herd and the farm helped to furnish forth the table.  This accretion of wealth took several years; some of the older men grew richer, and took to themselves wives and villas; the ranks were always filled up by more impecunious bachelors.  The bachelors called themselves ‘The Syndicate.’

The plan worked well, chiefly because of the fine air and the sunshine, the warm starry nights, and, above all, the witchery of the lake, which is to every man who has spent days and nights upon it like a mystical lady-love, ever changeful and ever charming.  Then, too, there was the contrast with the hot city; the sense of need fulfilled makes men good-natured.  The one servant of the establishment, an old man who made the beds and the dinners, was not a professional cook; the meals were often indifferent; yet the Syndicate did not quarrel among themselves.

Some outlet for temper perhaps was needful.  At any rate they had one outside quarrel with an old Welshman named Johns, a farmer of great importance in the place, who had sold them the land and tried, in their opinion, to cheat them afterwards about the boundaries.  Their united rage waxed hot against Johns, and he, on his side, did nothing to propitiate.  The quarrel came to no end; it was a feud.  ’Esprit de corps,’ like the fumes of wine, gives men a wholly unreasonable sense of complacence in themselves and their belongings, whatever the belongings may happen to be.  The Syndicate learned to cherish this feud as a valuable possession.

The Syndicate, as has been seen, had one house, one servant, and one enemy.  It also had one Baby.  The Baby was the youngest member of the community, a pretty boy who by some chance favour had obtained a bed in the dormitory at the hoyden age of nineteen.  He had a tendency to chubbiness, and his moustache, when it did come, was merely a silken whisp, hardly visible.  He did some fagging in return for the extraordinary favour of adoption.  The Baby from the first was entirely accustomed to being ‘sat upon.’  He had no unnecessary independence of mind.  At twenty-one he still continued to be ‘Baby.’

All the affairs of the Syndicate flourished, including the feud with the neighbouring landowner.  All went well with the men and their boats and the Baby, until, at length, upon one fateful day for the latter, there came a young person to the locality who made an addition to the household of Farmer Johns.

‘Old Johns has got a niece,’ said the bachelors sitting at dinner, as if the niece had come fresh to the world as babies do, and had not held the same relation to old Johns for twenty-five years.  Still, it was true she had never been in the old man’s possession before, and now she had arrived at his house, a sudden vision of delight as seen from the road or on the verandah.