Now this was a _single_ road, and was like a spoon whose handle stretched from the gate to a great round flower-bed in the neighborhood of the stable.

At the approach to the flower-bed the road divided and circumnavigated it, making a loop, which I have likened to the bowl of the spoon.

As we neared the loop, I saw that Whitmore was laying his course to port, (I was sitting on the starboard side--the side the house was on), and was going to start around that spoon-bowl on that left-hand side.

I said, "Don't do that, Whitmore; take the right-hand side.

Then I shall be next to the house when we get to the door." He said, "_That_ will not happen in _any case_, it doesn't make any difference which way I go around this flower-bed." I explained to him that he was an ass, but he stuck to his proposition, and I said, "Go on and try it, and see." He went on and tried it, and sure enough he fetched me up at the door on the very side that he had said I would be.