CHAPTER FIVE.

"Then you would organise a service of fast turbine steamers running all over the canal systems of the country?""Exactly. Or let us say—er—launches," said Dubberley. "I must not overstate my case.""Travelling twenty miles an hour?""Say fifteen, sir," said Dubberley magnanimously."Mr Dubberley," said Robin, in a voice which made us all jump, "have you a bathroom in your house?"Even the Twins, who were growing a trifle lethargic under the technicalities of the subject, roused themselves at this fresh turn of the conversation."Ah—eh—I beg your pardon?" said Dubberley, a trifle disconcerted."A bathroom," repeated Robin—"with a good long bath in it?""Er—yes.""Well, Mr Dubberley, when you go home this afternoon, go upstairs and fill the bath with water. Then take a large bath-sponge—something nearly as broad as the bath—and sweep it along from end to end, about a foot below the surface, at a speed of fifteen miles per hour—that will be twenty-two feet per second—and see what happens!"Robin had unconsciously dropped into what I may call his debating-society manner. His chin stuck out, and his large chest heaved, and he scooped the air, as if it had been the water of Dubberley's bath, with one of Kitty's priceless Worcester teacups.Dubberley sat completely demoralised, palpitating like a stranded frog."Then," continued Robin, "you would observe the result of placing a partly submerged and rapidly moving body in a shallow and restricted waterway. You would kick half the water right out of the canal to begin with, and the other half would pile itself up into a wave under your bow big enough to offer an almost immovable resistance to the progress of your vessel."He leaned back and surveyed the bemused Dubberley with complete and obvious satisfaction. We all sat round breathless, feeling much as Sidney Smith must have felt when some one spoke disrespectfully of the Equator. Great was the fall of Dubberley. He moved, perhaps instinctively, in a society where he was seldom contradicted and never argued with. One does not argue with a gramophone. And here this raw Scottish youth, with the awful thoroughness and relentless common-sense of his race, had taken the very words out of his mouth, torn them to shreds, and thrust them down his throat.I am afraid I chuckled. The Twins sat hand in hand, with dreamy eyes staring straight before them. They were conjuring up a joyous vision of Dubberley, in his shirt-sleeves, meekly refuting one of his own theories by means of a childish and sloppy experiment in practical hydrodynamics in his own bathroom.I give this incident as a fair example of Robin's point of view and methods of action on questions which I for one would never dream of debating. He was entirely lacking in an art which I am told I possess to perfection—that of suffering fools gladly. Its possession has raised me to an Under-Secretaryship. People who should know tell me that it will also prevent my ever rising to anything higher."We had a taste of our friend's quality this afternoon," I remarked to my household when we met for dinner that evening. "He is a thorough-going warrior. Fancy any man taking all that trouble to lay out old Dubberley!""Poor Mr Dubberley!" said tender-hearted Kitty."Do him good!" said Dilly, in whose recollection Dubberley's past enormities loomed large. "I shall be nice to the Secretary Bird now."Dolly said nothing, which was unusual. Perhaps the brown spot still rankled.CHAPTER FIVE.ROBIN ON DUTY.Beyond the fact that they are all desperately in earnest, all know each other, and occupy all the most responsible and lucrative posts on the face of the earth, Scotsmen are a class with whose characteristics I am not well acquainted. But I learned a great deal from my new secretary.Robin soon settled down to work. He not only performed his duties with zeal and discretion, but he kept me up to mine. He hounded me through the routine work of my Department; he verified my references; he managed my correspondence; and he frequently drafted my speeches. He even prepared some of my impromptus. Indeed, my—or rather his—description of a certain member of the other side, a lesser light of the last Government, a worthy man, always put up to explain matters when his leader had decided that honesty on this occasion was the best policy, as "a political niblick, always employed to get his party out of bad lies," won me more applause and popularity in a House of enthusiastic golfers than endless weeks of honest toil behind the scenes had ever done.But I learned more from Robin than that. I suppose I am a typical specimen of Conservative officialdom. Until Robin came into my house it had never occurred to me to ask myself why I was a Conservative: I had been born one, and it was difficult for me to understand how any man of ordinary intelligence could be anything else.My father and grandfather were Conservative members before me, and I come of a line which has always feared God, honoured the King, paid its tithes, and tried to do something for the poor; and which regards Radicals, Socialists, Nonconformists, and criminal lunatics as much the same class of person. The only difference between myself and my forebears is that I am much too pacific (or lazy) to cherish any animosity against people whose views differ from my own. This fact, coupled with certain family traditions, has brought me to my present position in life; and, as I have already indicated, it will probably keep me there. At least, so Kitty says."You mustassertyourself, dear," she declares. "Berudeto people, and go on being rude! Then they will take notice of you and give you nice big posts to keep you quiet. Do you know what the Premier said about you the other night at dinner, to Lady Bindle? (She told Dicky Lever, and he told the Twins.) 'Inglethwaite? A dear fellow, a sound party man, and runs his Department admirably. But—he strikes only on the box!' Pig!"It was about this time that Robin became a member of our establishment. I had no idea what his political views were—it was just like me not to have asked him, Kitty said—but felt confident that whatever side he supported he would do so hot and strong.But at first he gave no indication of his leanings. It was not until we sat one night over our wine, in company with John Champion (member for a big northern constituency, and regarded by many, notwithstanding various eccentricities, as the coming man of the party) that he first gave definite utterance to his views.The cigars had gone round, and we had just performed that mysterious national rite which, whether it owes its existence to economy or politeness, invariably ends in several people burning their fingers with the same match."I suppose, Mr Fordyce," said Champion, who had not met Robin before, but obviously liked him, "that in common with all Scotsmen you are at heart a Radical.""Am I?" said Robin, with native caution."Most of your countrymen are," said Champion, with a sigh. "'They think too much'—you know the rest of the quotation, I expect."Robin nodded.I was a little scandalised at this flagrant tribute to the enemy, and said so.Champion laughed."You are a whole-hearted old war-horse, Adrian. I envy you. Sometimes, I wish that I——""For mercy's sake don't go and say that you are a Radical at heart too," I cried."N-n-o. But isn't it rot, the whole business?""What whole business?""Ask Mr Fordyce there. He will tell you. I see it in his eye.""What is rot, Robin?" I asked. "Party government?""Yes," said Robin, quite explosively for him. "It is such a scandalous waste of power and material." He laid down his cigar. "Man, it's just pitiful. Consider! A party is returned to office. With great care and discrimination a Cabinet is chosen. It is composed of men who are mainly honest and patriotic. They are not necessarily men of genius, but they are all men of undoubted ability, and they are genuinely anxious to do their duty by the country. Now observe." (As a matter of fact he said "obsairrve.") "How is this energy and ability expended? About half of it—fifty per cent—goes in devising means to baffle the assaults of the Opposition and so retain a precarious hold on office. Sir, it's just ludicrous! Instead of concentrating their efforts upon—upon—I want a metaphor, Mr Champion.""Upon steering the ship of State," said Champion, with a twinkle in his eye."That'll do, fine.—Upon steering the ship of State, they have to devote half their time and energy to dodging the missiles of their shipmates. That is what I mean when I say the thing is pitiful. What should we think of the sanity of an ordinary ship's company, if the man at the wheel had to spend half his time up in the rigging because a minority of his messmates wanted to throw him overboard?""I think you are putting the case too strongly," I said. "The criticism of a healthy public opinion is no bad thing. Besides, your Cabinet still have fifty per cent of their energy left. What do they do with that?""Of that," said Champion, joining in, "about forty per cent is wasted on mere parade—dummy legislation—bills that never will be passed, and which no sensible man has any desire should be passed, except in a mutilated and useless condition; bills merely brought forward by the Government as a sop to the extreme wing of their own party. It doesn't matter which side is in power. If they are Liberals, they have to propose a few socialistic and iconoclastic measures, secretly thanking God for the House of Lords all the while. If they are Conservatives, they propitiate the Landlords and the Church by putting forward some outrageously retrograde proposal or other, secure in the knowledge that it will be knocked on the head by the halfpenny papers. Of the remaining ten per cent——""About nine," resumed Robin, "is appropriated automatically to absolutely essential routine business, like the Budget and Supply——""And the remaining one per cent," struck in Champion, "is devoted to real live Legislation."Then they both looked at me, this pair of carping pessimists, rather furtively, like two fags who have allowed their tongues to wag over freely in the presence of a monitor. It was a curious tribute to the power of officialdom, for they were both far bigger men, in every sense, than I. Finally Champion laughed."Don't look so horrified, Adrian," he said. "Mr Fordyce and I croak too much. Still, you will find a grain or two of sense among the chaff, as Jack Point says."But I was not to be smoothed down so easily."According to you fellows," I grumbled, as I passed the port, "there is practically no difference between one political party and another.""None whatever," said Champion cheerfully—"not between thebackbonesof the parties, that is. Of course excrescences don't count. Tell me, Adrian, what bill, barring one or two contentious semi-religious measures, has ultimately reached the Statute Book during the last twenty years that might not have been put there by either party without any violent departure from its principles? Not one! Foreign policy, again. Does it make any difference to our position in the world which party is in office nowadays? Not a scrap. The difference between the two sides is immaterial. There is often a far deeper line of cleavage between two sections of the same party than between party and party. We make faces at each other, it is true; and one side plumes itself on the moral support of Royalty and the aristocracy, while the other always bawls out that it has the inviolable will of the people at its back,—I daresay one assertion is about as true as the other—but I don't think there is a pennyworth of difference, really. There used to be a lot, mind you, when the Plebs were really struggling for a footing in the scheme of things; but bless you! we are all more or less in the same crowd now. Just a difference of label, that's all.""There was a story my dominie used to tell," said Robin, who had been listening to this diatribe with rapt attention, "about a visitor to a seaside hotel, who ordered a bottle of wine. The boy brought up the wrong kind, so the visitor sent for the landlord and pointed out the mistake, adducing the label on the bottle as evidence. 'I'm very sorry, sir, I'm sure,' said the landlord, 'but I'll soon put it right. Boy, bring another label!' An old story, I am afraid, but it seems to me to put Party goverment into a nutshell."I rose, and began to replace the stoppers in the decanters. I was feeling rather cross. I hate having my settled convictions tampered with. They are not elastic, and this makes them brittle, and I always feel nervous about their stability when the intellectual pressure of an argument grows intense."When you two have abolished the British Constitution," I remarked tartly, "what do you propose to substitute for the presentrégime?""'There,'" said Champion, "as the charwoman replied when asked for a character, 'you'aveme.' Let us join the ladies."But I was still angry."It always seems best to me," I persisted doggedly, "to take up a good sound line of action and stick to it, and to choose a good sound party and stick to that. Half a glass of sherry before we go upstairs?""No, thanks. That is why I envy you, Adrian," said Champion. "It's a wearing business for us, being so—so—what shall we call it, Mr Fordyce?""Detached?" suggested Robin."That's it.""Two-faced would be a better word," I growled.Champion clapped me on the shoulder."Adrian," said he, "in time of peace there is always a large, critical, neutral, and infernally irritating party, for ever philandering betwixt and between two extremes of opinion. But when war is declared and it comes to a fight, the ranks close up. There is no room for detachment, and there are no neutrals. When occasion calls, you'll find all your friends—your half-hearted, carping, Erastian friends—ranged up tight beside you. Shall we be trapesing about in Tom Tiddler's ground when the pinch comes, Mr Fordyce—eh?""Never fear!" said Robin.And I am bound to say that we all of us lived to see John Champion's assertion made good.CHAPTER SIX.ROBIN OFF DUTY.I have yet to introduce to the indulgent reader two more members of the family into which I have married.The first of these is my daughter Phillis, of whom I have already made passing mention. She is six years old, and appears to be compounded of about equal parts of angelic innocence and original sin. In her dealings with her fellow-creatures she exhibits all thesangfroidand self-possession that mark the modern child. She will be a "handful" some day, the Twins tell me, and they ought to know. However, pending the arrival of the time when she will begin to rend the hearts of young men, she contents herself for the present with practising that accomplishment with complete and lamentable success upon her own garments.She is the possessor of a vivid imagination, which she certainly does not inherit from me, and is fond of impersonating other people, either characters of her own creation or interesting figures from story-books. Consequently it is never safe to address her too suddenly. She may be a fairy, or a bear, or a locomotive at the moment, and will resent having to return to her proper self, even for a brief space, merely to listen to some stupid and irrelevant remark—usually something about bed-time or an open door—from an unintelligent adult.Kitty says that I spoil her, but that is only because Kitty is quicker at saying a thing than I am. She is our only child; and I sometimes wonder, at moments of acute mental introspection (say, in the night watches after an indigestible supper), what we should do without her.The other character waiting for introduction is my brother-in-law, Master Gerald Rubislaw. He is the solitary male member of the family of which my wife and the Twins form the female side. He is, I think, fourteen years of age, and he is at present a member of what he considers—very rightly, I think; and I should know, for I was there myself—the finest public school in the world. Having no parents, he resides at my house during his holidays, and refreshes me exceedingly.He is a sturdy but rather diminutive youth, with a loud voice. (He always addresses me as if I were standing on a distant hill-top.) He bears a resemblance to his sisters of which he is heartily and frankly ashamed, and which he endeavours at times to nullify as far as possible by a degree of personal uncleanliness which would be alarming to me, were it not that the traditions of my own extreme youth have not yet been entirely obliterated from my memory.His health is excellent, and his intellect is in that condition euphemistically described in house-master's reports as "unformed." He is always noisy, constitutionally lazy, and hopelessly casual. But he possesses the supreme merit of being absolutely and transparently honest. I have never known him tell a lie or do a mean thing. To such much is forgiven.At present he appears to possess only two ambitions in life; one, to gain a place in his Junior House Fifteen, and the other, to score some signal and lasting victory over his form-master, a Mr Sydney Mellar, with whom he appears to wage a sort of perpetual guerilla warfare. Every vacation brings him home with a fresh tale of base subterfuges, petty tyrannies, and childish exhibitions of spite on the part of the infamous Mellar, all duly frustrated, crushed, and made ridiculous by the ingenuity, resource, and audacity of the intrepid Rubislaw. I have never met Mr Mellar in the flesh, but I am conscious, as time goes on and my young relative's reminiscences on the subject accumulate, of an increasing feeling of admiration and respect for him."He's a rotten brute," observed Gerald one day. "Do you know what he had the cheek to do last term?""What?""Well, there was a clinking new desk put into our form-room, at the back. I sit there," he added rathernaïvely. "As soon as I saw it, of course I got out my knife and started to carve my name. I made good big letters, as I wanted to do the thing properly on a fine new desk like that.""Was this during school hours?" I ventured to inquire."Of course it was. Do you think a chap would be such a silly ass as to want to come in specially to carve his name during play-hours, when he's got the whole of his school-time to do it in?""I had not thought of that," I said apologetically."And don't go putting on side of that sort, Adrian, old man," roared Gerald, in what a stranger would have regarded as a most threatening voice, though I knew it was merely the one he keeps for moments of playful badinage. "I sawyourname carved in letters about four inches high in the Fifth Form room only the other day. I don't see how you can jaw a man for doing a thing you used to do yourself thirty or forty years ago."I allowed this reflection on my appearance to pass without protest, and Gerald resumed his story."Well, I did a first-class G to begin with, and was well on with the Rubislaw—all in capitals: I thought it would look best that way—when suddenly a great hand reached over my shoulder and grabbed my knife. It was Stinker, of course.""St——""Oh, I forgot to tell you that. We call him 'Stinker' now. You see, his name is S. Mellar, and if you say it quickly it sounds like 'Smeller.' So we call him 'Stinker.' It was a kid called Lane thought of it. Pretty smart—eh? Oh, he's a clever chap, I can tell you," yelled Gerald, with sincere enthusiasm."He must be a youth of gigantic intellect," I said."Oh, come off the roof! Well, Stinker grabbed my knife, and said, 'Hallo, young man, what's all this? Handing down your name to posterity—eh?' with a silly grin on his face."I said I was just carving my name."'I see you have just finished it,' he said."I didn't quite tumble to his meaning at first, because I had only got as far as G. RUB,—and then I saw that the whole thing as it stood spelled 'GRUB.' Lord, how the swine laughed! He told the form all about it, and of course they all laughed too, the sniggering, grovelling sweeps!"Then Stinker said: 'A happy thought has just occurred to me. I shall not have your name obliterated in the usual manner'—they cut it out and put in a fresh bit of wood, and charge you a bob—' this time. I have thought of a more excellent way.' (He always talks like that, in a sort of slow drawl.) 'We will leave your name exactly as you have carved it. But remember, young man, not another letter do you add to that name so long as you are a member of this school. A Grub you are,—a nasty little destructive Grub,—and a Grub you shall remain, so far as that desk is concerned, for all time. And if ever in future years you come down here as a distinguished Old Boy—say a K.C.B. or an Alderman,—remember to bring your numerous progeny'—oh, he's a sarcastic devil!—'to this room, and show them what their papa once was!'"Of course all the chaps roared again, at the idea of me with a lot of kids. But that wasn't all. He switched offthattap quite suddenly, and said—"'Seriously, though, I am not pleased about this. Carving your name on a desk is not one of the seven deadly sins, but doing so when I have told you not tois. This silly street-boy business has been getting too prevalent lately: we shall have you chalking things up on the walls next. I particularly gave out last week, when this new desk was put in, that no one was to touch it. Come to me at twelve, and I will cane you.' And hedid," concluded Gerald, with feeling."What a shame!" said Dilly, who was sitting by. "All for carving a silly old desk.""He was perfectly right," said Gerald, his innate sense of justice rising to the surface at once. "I wasn't lammed for cutting the desk at all: it was for doing it after I had been told not to.""It's the same thing," said Dilly, with feminine disregard for legal niceties."Same thing? Rot! Fat lot you know about it, Dilly. It's a rum thing," he added to me in a reflective bawl, "but women never can understand the rules of any game. Stinker is a bargee, but he was quite right to lam me. It was for disobedience; and disobedience is cheek; and no master worth his salt will stand cheek. So Stinker says, and he is right for once."Gerald is the possessor of a bosom friend, an excessively silent and rather saturnine youth of about his own age. His name is Donkin, and he regards Gerald, so far as I can see, with a grim mixture of amusement and compassion. He pays frequent visits to my house, as his father is a soldier in India; and he is much employed by the Twins for corroborating or refuting the more improbable of their brother's reminiscences.Robin soon made friends with the boys. Like most of their kind, their tests of human probity were few and simple: and having discovered that Robin not only played Rugby football, but had on several occasions represented Edinburgh University thereat, they straightway wrote him down a "decent chap" and took the rest of his virtues for granted.It came upon them—and me too, as a matter of fact—as rather a shock one evening, when Robin, during the course of a desultory conversation on education in general, suddenly launched forthmore suointo a diatribe against the English Public School system.English boys, he pointed out, were passed through a great machine, which ground up the individual at one end and disgorged a mere type at the other—("Pretty good type too, Robin," from me),—they were taught to worship bodily strength—("Quite right too!" said my herculean brother-in-law),—they were herded together under a monastic system; they were removed from the refining influence of female society—(even the imperturable Donkin snorted at this),—and worst of all, little or nothing was done to eradicate from their minds the youthful idea that it is unmanly to read seriously or think deeply.I might have said a good deal in reply. I might have dwelt upon the fact that the English Public School system is not so hard upon the stupid boy—which means the average boy—as that of more strenuous forcing-houses of intellect abroad. I might have spoken of one or two moral agents which prevent our schools from being altogether despicable: unquestioning obedience to authority, for instance, or loyalty to tradition. I might have told of characters moulded and fibres stiffened by responsibility—our race bears more responsibility on its shoulders than all the rest of the world put together—or of minds trained to interpret laws and balance justice in the small but exacting world of the prefects' meeting and the games' committee. But it was Gerald, who is no moralist, but a youth of sound common-sense, who closed the argument."Mr Fordyce," he said, "it's no usemyjawing to you, because you can knock me flat at that game; and of course old Moke there"—this was Master Donkin's unhappy but inevitable designation among his friends—"is too thick to argue with a stuffed rabbit; but you had better come down some time and see the place—that's all."Robin promised to suspend judgment pending a personal investigation, and the incident closed.Gerald's verdict on Robin's views, communicated to me privately afterwards, was characteristic but not unfavourable."He seems to have perfectly putrid notions about some things, but he's a pretty sound chap on the whole—the best secretary you have had, anyhow, old man. Have you seen him do a straight-arm balance on the billiard-table?"But I did not fully realise how completely Robin had settled down as an accepted member of my household until one afternoon towards the end of the Christmas holidays.There is a small but snug apartment opening out of my library, through an arched and curtained doorway. The library is regarded as my workroom—impregnable, inviolable; not to be rudely attempted by devastating housemaids. There is a sort of tacit agreement between Kitty and myself as regards this apartment. Fatima-like, she may do what she pleases with the rest of the house. She may indulge her passion for drawing-room meetings to its fullest extent. She may intertain missionaries in the attics and hold meetings of the Dorcas Society in the basement. She may give reformed burglars the run of the silver-closet, and allow curates and chorus-girls to mingle in sweet companionship on the staircase. But she must leave the library alone, and neither she nor her following must overflow through its double doors during what I call business hours.On this particular afternoon I had been engaged upon the draft of a small bill with which I had been entrusted—we will call it the "Importation of Mad Dogs Bill,"—and about four o'clock I handed it to Robin with instructions to write out a fair copy. Robin retired into his inner chamber, and I sat down in an arm-chair withPunch. (It was a Wednesday, the Parliamentary half-holiday of those days, and still, happily, thePunch-day of these.)Kitty was holding a Drawing-room Meeting upstairs. I forget what description of body she was entertaining: it was either a Society for the Propagation of something which could never, in the nature of things, come to birth; or else an Association for the Prevention of something that was bound to go on so long as the world endured. I had been mercifully absolved from attending, and my tea had been sent in to me. I was enjoying an excellent caricature of my Chief in the minor cartoon ofPunch, when I heard the door of the inner room open and the voice of my daughter inquire—"Are youdreffulbusy, Uncle Robin?" (My secretary had been elevated to avuncular rank after a probation of just three hours.)There was a sound as of a chair being pushed back, and a rustle which suggested the hasty laying aside of a manuscript, and Robin's voice said—"Come away, Philly!" (This is a favourite Scoticism of Robin's, and appears to be a term denoting hearty welcome.)There was a delighted squeal and the sound of pattering feet. Next ensued a period of rather audible osculation, and then there was silence. Presently Phillis said—"What shall we do? Shall I sing you a hymn?"Evidently the revels were about to commence."I have just learned a new one," she continued. "I heared it in Church yesterday afternoon, so I brought it home and changed it a bit. It's called 'Onward, Chwistian Sailors!'""'Soldiers,' isn't it?""No—'Sailors.' Itwas'Soldiers,' but I like sailors much better than soldiers, so I changed it. I'll sing it now.""Wait till Sunday," said Robin, with much presence of mind. "Will you not tell me a story?"This idea appeared so good that Phillis began forthwith."Once there were three horses what lived in a stable. Two was wise and one was just a foolish young horse. There was some wolves what lived quite near the stable——""Wolves?" said my secretary, in tones of mild surprise."The stable," explained Phillis, "stood in the midst of the snowy plains of Muscovy. I should have telled you that before.""Just so," said Robin gravely. "Go on.""Well, one day," continued the narratress's voice through the curtains—I knew the story by heart, so I was able to fill up the gaps for myself when she dropped to a confidential whisper—"one cold, windy, berleak day, the old wolves said to the young ones, 'How about a meal of meat?' and all the young one's said, 'Oh,let's!'"That very morning," continued Phillis in the impressive bass which she reserves for the most exciting parts of her narrative, "thatverymorning the foolish young horse said to the old horses, 'Who is for a scamper to-day?' Then he began to wiggle and wiggle at his halter. The old horses said, 'There is wolves outside, and our master says that they eat all sheep an' cattle an' horses,' But the young horse just wiggled and wiggled,"—I could hear my daughter suiting the action to the word upon her audience's knee,—"and pwesently his halter was off! Then out he rushed, kicking up the nimble snow with his feathery heels, and—what?"Robin, who was automatically murmuring something about transferred epithets, apologised for this pedantic lapse, and the tale proceeded."Well, just as he was goin' to have one more scamper, he felt a growl—a awful, fearful, deepgrowl,"—Phillis's voice sank to a bloodcurdling and continuous gurgle—"and he terrembled, like this! I'll show you——"She slipped off Robin's knee, and I knew that she was now on the hearth-rug, simulating acute palsy for his benefit."Then he felt somefing on his back, then somefing further up his back, then a bite at his neck; and then he felt his head bitten off, and he died. Now you tell me one.""Which?"Phillis considered."The one about the Kelpie and the Wee Bit Lassie."Robin obliged. At first he stumbled a little, and had to be prompted in hoarse whispers by Phillis (who apparently had heard the story several times before); but as the narrative progressed and the adventures of the wee bit lassie grew more enthralling and the Kelpie more terrifying, he became almost as immersed as his audience. When I peeped through the curtain they were both sitting on the hearth-rug pressed close together, Phillis gripping one of Robin's enormous hands in a pleasurable condition of terrified interest. The fair copy of the "Importation of Mad Dogs Bill," I regret to say, lay on the floor under the table. I retired to my arm-chair."The Kelpie," Robin continued, "came closer and closer behind her. Already she could feel a hot breath on her neck." (So could Robin on his, for that matter.) "But she did not give in. She ran faster and faster until——""You've forgotten to say she could hear its webbed feet goingpad padover the slippery stanes," interpolated Phillis anxiously."So I did. I'm sorry. She could hear its webbed feet goingpad padover the slippery stanes. Presently though, she came to a wee bit housie on the moor. It was empty, but she slippit through the yard-gate and flew along the path and in at the door. The Kelpie came flying through the gate——""No, no—it loupit ower the dyke!" screamed Phillis, who would countenance no tamperings with the original text."Oh, yes. It loupit ower the dyke, but the wee lassie just slammed the door in its face, and turned the key. Then she felt round in the dark and keeked about, wondering what kind of place she was in. And at that very moment, through a bit window in the wall——""She went ben first.""Oh, yes. She went ben; and at that very moment, through the bit window in the back-end of the house, there came a ray of light. The sun——""The sun had risen," declaimed Phillis, triumphantly taking up the tale; "and with one wild sheriek of disappointed rage the Kelpie vanished away, and the wee lassie wassaved!"There was a rapt pause after this exciting anecdote. Then Phillis remarked—"Uncle Robin, let's write that story down, and then I can get people to read it to me.""Why not write it down for yourself?""I can't write—much; and it ought to be writed in ink, and I—I am only allowed to use pencil," explained my daughter, not without a certain bitterness. "But I put the lead in my mouf," she added defiantly.At this moment the door of my apartment was hurled open, and Gerald projected himself into the room. It was the evening before his return to school, and there was a predatory look in his eye. He was accompanied by his speechless friend."Adrian, old son," he began, in such tones as an orator might address to a refractory mob, "Moke and I are going to have a study next term, and we want some furniture."I mildly remarked that in my day furniture was supplied by the school authorities."Yes, but I mean pictures and things. Can you give us one? We shall want something to go on that wall opposite the window, shan't we, Moke? The place where young Lee missed your head with the red-ink bottle.Haveyou got a picture handy, Adrian?"I replied in the negative.Gerald took not the slightest notice."It will have to be a pretty big one," he continued. "There is a good lot of red ink to cover. I have been taking a look round the house, and I must say the pictures you've got are a fairly mangy lot—aren't they, Moke?"The gentleman addressed coughed deprecatingly, and looked at me as much as to say that, whatever he thought of my taste in art, he had eaten my salt and would refrain from criticism."There's one that might do, though," continued Gerald. "It's hanging in the billiard-room—a big steamer in a storm."By this time Phillis and Robin had joined the conclave."I know," said Phillis, nodding her head; "a great beautiful boat in some waves. I should fink it was a friend of theGreat Eastern's," she added, referring to an antiquated print of the early Victorian leviathan which hung in the nursery."We could take it for a term or two, anyhow," continued Gerald, "until we get something better. I'm expecting some really decent ones after summer. Ainsliemajoris leaving then, and he has promised to let me have some of his cheap. Then you can have yours back, Adrian. That's the scheme! Come on, Moke, we'll go and take it down now. Thanks very much, old chap" (to me). "I'll tell Kitty that you've let us. We can jab it off its hook with a billiard-cue, I should think, Moke. Come too, will you, Mr Fordyce? You can stand underneath and catch it, in case it comes down with a run. So long, Adrian!"The whole pack of them swept from the room, leaving the door open.When I looked in at the billiard-room on my way up to dress for dinner an hour later, nothing remained to mark the spot hitherto occupied by a signed and numbered proof ofAn Ocean Greyhound, by Michael Angelo Mahlstaff, A.R.A. (a wedding gift to my wife and myself from the artist), but the imprints of several hot hands on the wall, together with a series of parallel perpendicular scars, apparently inflicted by a full-sized harrow.From which two chapters it will be gathered that Robert Chalmers Fordyce was a man capable, in his ordinary working-day, of playing many parts.CHAPTER SEVEN.A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP.I.My wife and I would have been more than human if we had not occasionally cast a curious eye upon the relations of Robin and the Twins.Of Robin's attitude towards that pair of charmers Kitty could make little and I nothing. He kept his place and went his own way—rather ostentatiously, I thought—and appeared if anything to avoid them. If he found himself in their company he treated them with a certain grave reticence—he soon grew out of his fondness for addressing us like a public meeting—and made little attempt to bestow upon them the attentions which young maidens are accustomed to receive from young men.There was no mystery about the Twins' attitude towards Robin. "Here," said they in effect, "is a fine upstanding young man, full of promise, but hampered in every direction by abysmal ignorance on matters of vital importance. His instincts are sound, but at present he is quite impossible. What he wants is mothering."And so they mothered him, most maternally. They exerted themselves quite strenuously to instil into him the fundamental principles of life—the correct method of tying a dress tie; the intricate ritual which governs such things as visiting-cards and asparagus; the exact limit of the domains of brown boots and dinner-jackets; the utter criminality of dickeys, turn-down collars, and side-whiskers; and the superiority of dialogue to monologue as a concomitant to afternoon tea.In many respects, they discovered with pleased surprise, their pupil required no instruction or surveillance. For instance, he could always be trusted to enter or leave a room without awkwardness, and his manner of address was perfect. He was neither servile nor familiar, and the only people to whom I ever saw him pay marked deference were the members of what is after all the only real and natural aristocracy in the world—that of old age.All their ministrations Robin received with grave wonder—he was not of the sort that can easily magnify a fetish into a deity—but, evidently struck by the intense importance attached by the Twins to their own doctrines, he showed himself a most amenable pupil. Probably he realised, in spite of hereditary preference for inward worth as opposed to outward show, that though a coat cannot make a man, a good man in a good coat often has the advantage of a good man in a bad coat. So he allowed the Twins to round off his corners; and, without losing any of his original ruggedness of character or toughness of fibre, he soon developed into a well-groomed and sufficiently presentable adjunct—quite distinguished-looking, Dilly said, when she met us one day on our way down to the House—to a lady's morning walk.What he really thought of it all I do not know. I have a kind of suspicion that deep down in his heart every Scot entertains a contempt for the volatile and frivolous English which is only equalled by that of the English for the nation to whom I once heard a Highland minister refer as "the giddy and godless French"; but Robin was not given to the revelation of his private thoughts. He seldom spoke of the Twins to me—he was a discusser of manners rather than men—but he once remarked that they were girls of widely different character. He entered into no further details, but I remember being struck by the observation at the time; for I had always regarded my sisters-in-law as being as identical in disposition as they were in appearance.Still it was pretty to see Robin unbending to please the two girls, and to hear him say "No, really?" or "My word, what rot!" when you knew that his tongue was itching to cry, "Is that a fact?" or "Hoots!" or "Havers!" as the occasion demanded.He also possessed the great and unique merit of not being ashamed to ask for guidance in a difficulty. I have known him pause before an unfamiliar dish at table and ask one of his preceptresses, in the frankest manner possible, whether the exigencies of the situation called for a spoon or a fork: and out of doors it was a perpetual joy to hear him whisper, on the approach of some one whom he thought might be a friend of ours, "Will I lift my hat?"All that year Robin was my right hand. It was a long session; and as my Chief sat in the Upper House, much work in the way of answering questions and making statements fell upon me. We had a good working majority, but the Opposition were a united and well-organised body that year, and we had to rise early and go to bed late to keep their assaults at bay while proceeding with the programme of the session. Every afternoon, before I entered the House to take my place at question-time, my secretary insisted on taking me through the answers which he had prepared for my recitation; and we also discussed the line of action to be pursued if I were cornered by questions of the "arising-out-of-that-answer" order.Personally, I loathed this part of the work—I am a departmentalist pure and simple—but Robin's eye used to glow with the light of battle as he rehearsed me in the undoubtedly telling counters with which I was to pulverise the foe."I would like fine," he once said to me, "to stand up in your place and answer these questions for you.""I wish you could, Robin," I sighed. "And," I added, "I believe you will some day."Robin turned pink, for the first time in our acquaintance, and I heard his teeth click suddenly together.So the wind lay that way!II.During the next year my household was furnished with three surprises, Dilly contributing one and Robin two.Robin's came first. One was his uncle, the other his book.One night it fell to my lot to dine in the City, as the guest of the Honourable Company of Tile-Glazers and Mortar-Mixers. As I swam forlornly through a turgid ocean of turtle-soup and clarified punch towards an unyielding continent of fish, irrigated by brown sherry, mechanically rehearsing to myself the series of sparkling yet statesmanlike epigrams with which I proposed to reply to the toast of his Majesty's Ministers I became aware that the gentleman on my left was addressing me in a voice that seemed vaguely familiar."And how is my brother's second boy doing with you, Mr Inglethwaite?"I must have looked a trifle blank, for he added—"My nephew, Robin."I glanced obliquely at the card which marked his place at table, and read—Sir James Fordyce.Then I began to grasp the situation, and I realised that this great man, whose name was honourably known wherever the ills of childhood are combated, was Robin's uncle, the "doctor" to whom my secretary had casually referred, and whom he occasionally went to visit on Sunday afternoons. I had pictured an overdriven G.P., living in Bloomsbury or Balham, with a black bag, and a bulge in his hat where he kept his stethoscope. A man sufficiently distinguished to represent his profession at a public banquet was more than I had bargained for.We became friends at once, and supported each other, so to speak, amid the multitude of dinners and dishes, our respective neighbours proving but broken reeds so far as social intercourse was concerned. On Sir James's left, I remember, sat a plethoric gentleman whose burnished countenance gave him the appearance of a sort of incarnate Glazed Tile; while my right-hand neighbour, from the manner in which he manipulated the food upon his plate, I put down without hesitation as a Mortar Mixer of high standing.The old gentleman gave me a good deal of information about Robin."He had a hard fight his first year or two in London," he said. "I could see by the way he fell upon his dinner when he came to my house that his meat and drink were not easily come by. Still, now that he has won through, he will not regret the experience. I had it myself. It is the finest training that a young man can receive. Hard, terribly hard, but invaluable! You will not have seen his father yet—my brother John?"I told him no."Well, try and meet him. You, as an Englishman, would perhaps call him hard and narrow,—after forty years of London I sometimes find him so myself,—but he is a fine man, and he has a good wife. So have you," he added unexpectedly—"Robin has told me that."I laughed, in what the Twins call the "silly little gratified way" which obtrudes itself into my demeanour when any one praises Kitty."I hope you are in the same happy situation," I said."No, I am a bachelor. My brother John has not achieved a K.C.B., but he is a more fortunate man than I."The conversation dropped here, but I repeated it to my wife afterwards."Of course, the whole thing is as clear as daylight," she said. "These two brothers both wanted to marry the same girl. She took the farmer one, so the other, poor thing, went off to London and became a famous doctor instead. That's all. He might have been Robin's father, but he's only his uncle."Happy the mind which can reconstruct a romance out of such scanty material.Sir James ultimately dined at my house, and became a firm friend of all that dwelt therein, especially Phillis.Then came Robin's second surprise—his book. It was a novel, and a very good novel too. He had been at it for some time, he told me, but it was only recently that he had contrived to finish it off. Being distrustful of its merits, he had decided to offer it to just one good publisher, who could take it or leave it. If he took it, well and good. But if the publisher (and possibly just one other) exhibited an attitude of aloofness, Robin had fully decided not to hawk his bantling about among other less reputable and more amenable firms, but to consign it to his bedroom fire.However, this inhuman but only-too-unusual sacrifice of the parental instinct was averted by the one good publisher, who accepted the book, and introduced Robin to the public.Either through shyness or indifference Robin had told us nothing of the approaching interesting event, and it was not until one morning in October, when a parcel of complimentary copies arrived from the publisher's, that we were apprised of the fact that we had been cherishing an author in our midst. Robin solemnly presented us with a copy apiece (which I thought handsome but extravagant), and also sent one to his parents, who, though I think they rather doubted the propriety of possessing a son who wrote novels at all, wrote back comparing it very favourably withThe Pilgrim's Progress, the only other work of fiction with which they were acquainted.The book itself dealt with matters rather than men, and with men rather than women; which was characteristic of its author, but rather irritating for the Twins. It had a good deal to say about the under-side of journalism,—graphic and convincing, all this,—and contained a rather technical but absorbingly interesting account of some most exciting financial operations, winding up with a great description of a panic on the Stock Exchange. But there were few light and no tender passages, from which it will be seen that Robin as an author appealed to the male rather than the female intellect.The Twins, I think, were secretly rather disappointed with the book, less from any particular fondness for the perusal of love-passages than from a truly human desire to note how Robin would have handled them; for it is always interesting to see to what extent our friends will give themselves away when they commit the indiscretion of a book. On this occasion Robin had been exasperatingly self-contained.But life is full of compensations. There was a dedication. It read:—

"Then you would organise a service of fast turbine steamers running all over the canal systems of the country?"

"Exactly. Or let us say—er—launches," said Dubberley. "I must not overstate my case."

"Travelling twenty miles an hour?"

"Say fifteen, sir," said Dubberley magnanimously.

"Mr Dubberley," said Robin, in a voice which made us all jump, "have you a bathroom in your house?"

Even the Twins, who were growing a trifle lethargic under the technicalities of the subject, roused themselves at this fresh turn of the conversation.

"Ah—eh—I beg your pardon?" said Dubberley, a trifle disconcerted.

"A bathroom," repeated Robin—"with a good long bath in it?"

"Er—yes."

"Well, Mr Dubberley, when you go home this afternoon, go upstairs and fill the bath with water. Then take a large bath-sponge—something nearly as broad as the bath—and sweep it along from end to end, about a foot below the surface, at a speed of fifteen miles per hour—that will be twenty-two feet per second—and see what happens!"

Robin had unconsciously dropped into what I may call his debating-society manner. His chin stuck out, and his large chest heaved, and he scooped the air, as if it had been the water of Dubberley's bath, with one of Kitty's priceless Worcester teacups.

Dubberley sat completely demoralised, palpitating like a stranded frog.

"Then," continued Robin, "you would observe the result of placing a partly submerged and rapidly moving body in a shallow and restricted waterway. You would kick half the water right out of the canal to begin with, and the other half would pile itself up into a wave under your bow big enough to offer an almost immovable resistance to the progress of your vessel."

He leaned back and surveyed the bemused Dubberley with complete and obvious satisfaction. We all sat round breathless, feeling much as Sidney Smith must have felt when some one spoke disrespectfully of the Equator. Great was the fall of Dubberley. He moved, perhaps instinctively, in a society where he was seldom contradicted and never argued with. One does not argue with a gramophone. And here this raw Scottish youth, with the awful thoroughness and relentless common-sense of his race, had taken the very words out of his mouth, torn them to shreds, and thrust them down his throat.

I am afraid I chuckled. The Twins sat hand in hand, with dreamy eyes staring straight before them. They were conjuring up a joyous vision of Dubberley, in his shirt-sleeves, meekly refuting one of his own theories by means of a childish and sloppy experiment in practical hydrodynamics in his own bathroom.

I give this incident as a fair example of Robin's point of view and methods of action on questions which I for one would never dream of debating. He was entirely lacking in an art which I am told I possess to perfection—that of suffering fools gladly. Its possession has raised me to an Under-Secretaryship. People who should know tell me that it will also prevent my ever rising to anything higher.

"We had a taste of our friend's quality this afternoon," I remarked to my household when we met for dinner that evening. "He is a thorough-going warrior. Fancy any man taking all that trouble to lay out old Dubberley!"

"Poor Mr Dubberley!" said tender-hearted Kitty.

"Do him good!" said Dilly, in whose recollection Dubberley's past enormities loomed large. "I shall be nice to the Secretary Bird now."

Dolly said nothing, which was unusual. Perhaps the brown spot still rankled.

Beyond the fact that they are all desperately in earnest, all know each other, and occupy all the most responsible and lucrative posts on the face of the earth, Scotsmen are a class with whose characteristics I am not well acquainted. But I learned a great deal from my new secretary.

Robin soon settled down to work. He not only performed his duties with zeal and discretion, but he kept me up to mine. He hounded me through the routine work of my Department; he verified my references; he managed my correspondence; and he frequently drafted my speeches. He even prepared some of my impromptus. Indeed, my—or rather his—description of a certain member of the other side, a lesser light of the last Government, a worthy man, always put up to explain matters when his leader had decided that honesty on this occasion was the best policy, as "a political niblick, always employed to get his party out of bad lies," won me more applause and popularity in a House of enthusiastic golfers than endless weeks of honest toil behind the scenes had ever done.

But I learned more from Robin than that. I suppose I am a typical specimen of Conservative officialdom. Until Robin came into my house it had never occurred to me to ask myself why I was a Conservative: I had been born one, and it was difficult for me to understand how any man of ordinary intelligence could be anything else.

My father and grandfather were Conservative members before me, and I come of a line which has always feared God, honoured the King, paid its tithes, and tried to do something for the poor; and which regards Radicals, Socialists, Nonconformists, and criminal lunatics as much the same class of person. The only difference between myself and my forebears is that I am much too pacific (or lazy) to cherish any animosity against people whose views differ from my own. This fact, coupled with certain family traditions, has brought me to my present position in life; and, as I have already indicated, it will probably keep me there. At least, so Kitty says.

"You mustassertyourself, dear," she declares. "Berudeto people, and go on being rude! Then they will take notice of you and give you nice big posts to keep you quiet. Do you know what the Premier said about you the other night at dinner, to Lady Bindle? (She told Dicky Lever, and he told the Twins.) 'Inglethwaite? A dear fellow, a sound party man, and runs his Department admirably. But—he strikes only on the box!' Pig!"

It was about this time that Robin became a member of our establishment. I had no idea what his political views were—it was just like me not to have asked him, Kitty said—but felt confident that whatever side he supported he would do so hot and strong.

But at first he gave no indication of his leanings. It was not until we sat one night over our wine, in company with John Champion (member for a big northern constituency, and regarded by many, notwithstanding various eccentricities, as the coming man of the party) that he first gave definite utterance to his views.

The cigars had gone round, and we had just performed that mysterious national rite which, whether it owes its existence to economy or politeness, invariably ends in several people burning their fingers with the same match.

"I suppose, Mr Fordyce," said Champion, who had not met Robin before, but obviously liked him, "that in common with all Scotsmen you are at heart a Radical."

"Am I?" said Robin, with native caution.

"Most of your countrymen are," said Champion, with a sigh. "'They think too much'—you know the rest of the quotation, I expect."

Robin nodded.

I was a little scandalised at this flagrant tribute to the enemy, and said so.

Champion laughed.

"You are a whole-hearted old war-horse, Adrian. I envy you. Sometimes, I wish that I——"

"For mercy's sake don't go and say that you are a Radical at heart too," I cried.

"N-n-o. But isn't it rot, the whole business?"

"What whole business?"

"Ask Mr Fordyce there. He will tell you. I see it in his eye."

"What is rot, Robin?" I asked. "Party government?"

"Yes," said Robin, quite explosively for him. "It is such a scandalous waste of power and material." He laid down his cigar. "Man, it's just pitiful. Consider! A party is returned to office. With great care and discrimination a Cabinet is chosen. It is composed of men who are mainly honest and patriotic. They are not necessarily men of genius, but they are all men of undoubted ability, and they are genuinely anxious to do their duty by the country. Now observe." (As a matter of fact he said "obsairrve.") "How is this energy and ability expended? About half of it—fifty per cent—goes in devising means to baffle the assaults of the Opposition and so retain a precarious hold on office. Sir, it's just ludicrous! Instead of concentrating their efforts upon—upon—I want a metaphor, Mr Champion."

"Upon steering the ship of State," said Champion, with a twinkle in his eye.

"That'll do, fine.—Upon steering the ship of State, they have to devote half their time and energy to dodging the missiles of their shipmates. That is what I mean when I say the thing is pitiful. What should we think of the sanity of an ordinary ship's company, if the man at the wheel had to spend half his time up in the rigging because a minority of his messmates wanted to throw him overboard?"

"I think you are putting the case too strongly," I said. "The criticism of a healthy public opinion is no bad thing. Besides, your Cabinet still have fifty per cent of their energy left. What do they do with that?"

"Of that," said Champion, joining in, "about forty per cent is wasted on mere parade—dummy legislation—bills that never will be passed, and which no sensible man has any desire should be passed, except in a mutilated and useless condition; bills merely brought forward by the Government as a sop to the extreme wing of their own party. It doesn't matter which side is in power. If they are Liberals, they have to propose a few socialistic and iconoclastic measures, secretly thanking God for the House of Lords all the while. If they are Conservatives, they propitiate the Landlords and the Church by putting forward some outrageously retrograde proposal or other, secure in the knowledge that it will be knocked on the head by the halfpenny papers. Of the remaining ten per cent——"

"About nine," resumed Robin, "is appropriated automatically to absolutely essential routine business, like the Budget and Supply——"

"And the remaining one per cent," struck in Champion, "is devoted to real live Legislation."

Then they both looked at me, this pair of carping pessimists, rather furtively, like two fags who have allowed their tongues to wag over freely in the presence of a monitor. It was a curious tribute to the power of officialdom, for they were both far bigger men, in every sense, than I. Finally Champion laughed.

"Don't look so horrified, Adrian," he said. "Mr Fordyce and I croak too much. Still, you will find a grain or two of sense among the chaff, as Jack Point says."

But I was not to be smoothed down so easily.

"According to you fellows," I grumbled, as I passed the port, "there is practically no difference between one political party and another."

"None whatever," said Champion cheerfully—"not between thebackbonesof the parties, that is. Of course excrescences don't count. Tell me, Adrian, what bill, barring one or two contentious semi-religious measures, has ultimately reached the Statute Book during the last twenty years that might not have been put there by either party without any violent departure from its principles? Not one! Foreign policy, again. Does it make any difference to our position in the world which party is in office nowadays? Not a scrap. The difference between the two sides is immaterial. There is often a far deeper line of cleavage between two sections of the same party than between party and party. We make faces at each other, it is true; and one side plumes itself on the moral support of Royalty and the aristocracy, while the other always bawls out that it has the inviolable will of the people at its back,—I daresay one assertion is about as true as the other—but I don't think there is a pennyworth of difference, really. There used to be a lot, mind you, when the Plebs were really struggling for a footing in the scheme of things; but bless you! we are all more or less in the same crowd now. Just a difference of label, that's all."

"There was a story my dominie used to tell," said Robin, who had been listening to this diatribe with rapt attention, "about a visitor to a seaside hotel, who ordered a bottle of wine. The boy brought up the wrong kind, so the visitor sent for the landlord and pointed out the mistake, adducing the label on the bottle as evidence. 'I'm very sorry, sir, I'm sure,' said the landlord, 'but I'll soon put it right. Boy, bring another label!' An old story, I am afraid, but it seems to me to put Party goverment into a nutshell."

I rose, and began to replace the stoppers in the decanters. I was feeling rather cross. I hate having my settled convictions tampered with. They are not elastic, and this makes them brittle, and I always feel nervous about their stability when the intellectual pressure of an argument grows intense.

"When you two have abolished the British Constitution," I remarked tartly, "what do you propose to substitute for the presentrégime?"

"'There,'" said Champion, "as the charwoman replied when asked for a character, 'you'aveme.' Let us join the ladies."

But I was still angry.

"It always seems best to me," I persisted doggedly, "to take up a good sound line of action and stick to it, and to choose a good sound party and stick to that. Half a glass of sherry before we go upstairs?"

"No, thanks. That is why I envy you, Adrian," said Champion. "It's a wearing business for us, being so—so—what shall we call it, Mr Fordyce?"

"Detached?" suggested Robin.

"That's it."

"Two-faced would be a better word," I growled.

Champion clapped me on the shoulder.

"Adrian," said he, "in time of peace there is always a large, critical, neutral, and infernally irritating party, for ever philandering betwixt and between two extremes of opinion. But when war is declared and it comes to a fight, the ranks close up. There is no room for detachment, and there are no neutrals. When occasion calls, you'll find all your friends—your half-hearted, carping, Erastian friends—ranged up tight beside you. Shall we be trapesing about in Tom Tiddler's ground when the pinch comes, Mr Fordyce—eh?"

"Never fear!" said Robin.

And I am bound to say that we all of us lived to see John Champion's assertion made good.

I have yet to introduce to the indulgent reader two more members of the family into which I have married.

The first of these is my daughter Phillis, of whom I have already made passing mention. She is six years old, and appears to be compounded of about equal parts of angelic innocence and original sin. In her dealings with her fellow-creatures she exhibits all thesangfroidand self-possession that mark the modern child. She will be a "handful" some day, the Twins tell me, and they ought to know. However, pending the arrival of the time when she will begin to rend the hearts of young men, she contents herself for the present with practising that accomplishment with complete and lamentable success upon her own garments.

She is the possessor of a vivid imagination, which she certainly does not inherit from me, and is fond of impersonating other people, either characters of her own creation or interesting figures from story-books. Consequently it is never safe to address her too suddenly. She may be a fairy, or a bear, or a locomotive at the moment, and will resent having to return to her proper self, even for a brief space, merely to listen to some stupid and irrelevant remark—usually something about bed-time or an open door—from an unintelligent adult.

Kitty says that I spoil her, but that is only because Kitty is quicker at saying a thing than I am. She is our only child; and I sometimes wonder, at moments of acute mental introspection (say, in the night watches after an indigestible supper), what we should do without her.

The other character waiting for introduction is my brother-in-law, Master Gerald Rubislaw. He is the solitary male member of the family of which my wife and the Twins form the female side. He is, I think, fourteen years of age, and he is at present a member of what he considers—very rightly, I think; and I should know, for I was there myself—the finest public school in the world. Having no parents, he resides at my house during his holidays, and refreshes me exceedingly.

He is a sturdy but rather diminutive youth, with a loud voice. (He always addresses me as if I were standing on a distant hill-top.) He bears a resemblance to his sisters of which he is heartily and frankly ashamed, and which he endeavours at times to nullify as far as possible by a degree of personal uncleanliness which would be alarming to me, were it not that the traditions of my own extreme youth have not yet been entirely obliterated from my memory.

His health is excellent, and his intellect is in that condition euphemistically described in house-master's reports as "unformed." He is always noisy, constitutionally lazy, and hopelessly casual. But he possesses the supreme merit of being absolutely and transparently honest. I have never known him tell a lie or do a mean thing. To such much is forgiven.

At present he appears to possess only two ambitions in life; one, to gain a place in his Junior House Fifteen, and the other, to score some signal and lasting victory over his form-master, a Mr Sydney Mellar, with whom he appears to wage a sort of perpetual guerilla warfare. Every vacation brings him home with a fresh tale of base subterfuges, petty tyrannies, and childish exhibitions of spite on the part of the infamous Mellar, all duly frustrated, crushed, and made ridiculous by the ingenuity, resource, and audacity of the intrepid Rubislaw. I have never met Mr Mellar in the flesh, but I am conscious, as time goes on and my young relative's reminiscences on the subject accumulate, of an increasing feeling of admiration and respect for him.

"He's a rotten brute," observed Gerald one day. "Do you know what he had the cheek to do last term?"

"What?"

"Well, there was a clinking new desk put into our form-room, at the back. I sit there," he added rathernaïvely. "As soon as I saw it, of course I got out my knife and started to carve my name. I made good big letters, as I wanted to do the thing properly on a fine new desk like that."

"Was this during school hours?" I ventured to inquire.

"Of course it was. Do you think a chap would be such a silly ass as to want to come in specially to carve his name during play-hours, when he's got the whole of his school-time to do it in?"

"I had not thought of that," I said apologetically.

"And don't go putting on side of that sort, Adrian, old man," roared Gerald, in what a stranger would have regarded as a most threatening voice, though I knew it was merely the one he keeps for moments of playful badinage. "I sawyourname carved in letters about four inches high in the Fifth Form room only the other day. I don't see how you can jaw a man for doing a thing you used to do yourself thirty or forty years ago."

I allowed this reflection on my appearance to pass without protest, and Gerald resumed his story.

"Well, I did a first-class G to begin with, and was well on with the Rubislaw—all in capitals: I thought it would look best that way—when suddenly a great hand reached over my shoulder and grabbed my knife. It was Stinker, of course."

"St——"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you that. We call him 'Stinker' now. You see, his name is S. Mellar, and if you say it quickly it sounds like 'Smeller.' So we call him 'Stinker.' It was a kid called Lane thought of it. Pretty smart—eh? Oh, he's a clever chap, I can tell you," yelled Gerald, with sincere enthusiasm.

"He must be a youth of gigantic intellect," I said.

"Oh, come off the roof! Well, Stinker grabbed my knife, and said, 'Hallo, young man, what's all this? Handing down your name to posterity—eh?' with a silly grin on his face.

"I said I was just carving my name.

"'I see you have just finished it,' he said.

"I didn't quite tumble to his meaning at first, because I had only got as far as G. RUB,—and then I saw that the whole thing as it stood spelled 'GRUB.' Lord, how the swine laughed! He told the form all about it, and of course they all laughed too, the sniggering, grovelling sweeps!

"Then Stinker said: 'A happy thought has just occurred to me. I shall not have your name obliterated in the usual manner'—they cut it out and put in a fresh bit of wood, and charge you a bob—' this time. I have thought of a more excellent way.' (He always talks like that, in a sort of slow drawl.) 'We will leave your name exactly as you have carved it. But remember, young man, not another letter do you add to that name so long as you are a member of this school. A Grub you are,—a nasty little destructive Grub,—and a Grub you shall remain, so far as that desk is concerned, for all time. And if ever in future years you come down here as a distinguished Old Boy—say a K.C.B. or an Alderman,—remember to bring your numerous progeny'—oh, he's a sarcastic devil!—'to this room, and show them what their papa once was!'

"Of course all the chaps roared again, at the idea of me with a lot of kids. But that wasn't all. He switched offthattap quite suddenly, and said—

"'Seriously, though, I am not pleased about this. Carving your name on a desk is not one of the seven deadly sins, but doing so when I have told you not tois. This silly street-boy business has been getting too prevalent lately: we shall have you chalking things up on the walls next. I particularly gave out last week, when this new desk was put in, that no one was to touch it. Come to me at twelve, and I will cane you.' And hedid," concluded Gerald, with feeling.

"What a shame!" said Dilly, who was sitting by. "All for carving a silly old desk."

"He was perfectly right," said Gerald, his innate sense of justice rising to the surface at once. "I wasn't lammed for cutting the desk at all: it was for doing it after I had been told not to."

"It's the same thing," said Dilly, with feminine disregard for legal niceties.

"Same thing? Rot! Fat lot you know about it, Dilly. It's a rum thing," he added to me in a reflective bawl, "but women never can understand the rules of any game. Stinker is a bargee, but he was quite right to lam me. It was for disobedience; and disobedience is cheek; and no master worth his salt will stand cheek. So Stinker says, and he is right for once."

Gerald is the possessor of a bosom friend, an excessively silent and rather saturnine youth of about his own age. His name is Donkin, and he regards Gerald, so far as I can see, with a grim mixture of amusement and compassion. He pays frequent visits to my house, as his father is a soldier in India; and he is much employed by the Twins for corroborating or refuting the more improbable of their brother's reminiscences.

Robin soon made friends with the boys. Like most of their kind, their tests of human probity were few and simple: and having discovered that Robin not only played Rugby football, but had on several occasions represented Edinburgh University thereat, they straightway wrote him down a "decent chap" and took the rest of his virtues for granted.

It came upon them—and me too, as a matter of fact—as rather a shock one evening, when Robin, during the course of a desultory conversation on education in general, suddenly launched forthmore suointo a diatribe against the English Public School system.

English boys, he pointed out, were passed through a great machine, which ground up the individual at one end and disgorged a mere type at the other—("Pretty good type too, Robin," from me),—they were taught to worship bodily strength—("Quite right too!" said my herculean brother-in-law),—they were herded together under a monastic system; they were removed from the refining influence of female society—(even the imperturable Donkin snorted at this),—and worst of all, little or nothing was done to eradicate from their minds the youthful idea that it is unmanly to read seriously or think deeply.

I might have said a good deal in reply. I might have dwelt upon the fact that the English Public School system is not so hard upon the stupid boy—which means the average boy—as that of more strenuous forcing-houses of intellect abroad. I might have spoken of one or two moral agents which prevent our schools from being altogether despicable: unquestioning obedience to authority, for instance, or loyalty to tradition. I might have told of characters moulded and fibres stiffened by responsibility—our race bears more responsibility on its shoulders than all the rest of the world put together—or of minds trained to interpret laws and balance justice in the small but exacting world of the prefects' meeting and the games' committee. But it was Gerald, who is no moralist, but a youth of sound common-sense, who closed the argument.

"Mr Fordyce," he said, "it's no usemyjawing to you, because you can knock me flat at that game; and of course old Moke there"—this was Master Donkin's unhappy but inevitable designation among his friends—"is too thick to argue with a stuffed rabbit; but you had better come down some time and see the place—that's all."

Robin promised to suspend judgment pending a personal investigation, and the incident closed.

Gerald's verdict on Robin's views, communicated to me privately afterwards, was characteristic but not unfavourable.

"He seems to have perfectly putrid notions about some things, but he's a pretty sound chap on the whole—the best secretary you have had, anyhow, old man. Have you seen him do a straight-arm balance on the billiard-table?"

But I did not fully realise how completely Robin had settled down as an accepted member of my household until one afternoon towards the end of the Christmas holidays.

There is a small but snug apartment opening out of my library, through an arched and curtained doorway. The library is regarded as my workroom—impregnable, inviolable; not to be rudely attempted by devastating housemaids. There is a sort of tacit agreement between Kitty and myself as regards this apartment. Fatima-like, she may do what she pleases with the rest of the house. She may indulge her passion for drawing-room meetings to its fullest extent. She may intertain missionaries in the attics and hold meetings of the Dorcas Society in the basement. She may give reformed burglars the run of the silver-closet, and allow curates and chorus-girls to mingle in sweet companionship on the staircase. But she must leave the library alone, and neither she nor her following must overflow through its double doors during what I call business hours.

On this particular afternoon I had been engaged upon the draft of a small bill with which I had been entrusted—we will call it the "Importation of Mad Dogs Bill,"—and about four o'clock I handed it to Robin with instructions to write out a fair copy. Robin retired into his inner chamber, and I sat down in an arm-chair withPunch. (It was a Wednesday, the Parliamentary half-holiday of those days, and still, happily, thePunch-day of these.)

Kitty was holding a Drawing-room Meeting upstairs. I forget what description of body she was entertaining: it was either a Society for the Propagation of something which could never, in the nature of things, come to birth; or else an Association for the Prevention of something that was bound to go on so long as the world endured. I had been mercifully absolved from attending, and my tea had been sent in to me. I was enjoying an excellent caricature of my Chief in the minor cartoon ofPunch, when I heard the door of the inner room open and the voice of my daughter inquire—

"Are youdreffulbusy, Uncle Robin?" (My secretary had been elevated to avuncular rank after a probation of just three hours.)

There was a sound as of a chair being pushed back, and a rustle which suggested the hasty laying aside of a manuscript, and Robin's voice said—

"Come away, Philly!" (This is a favourite Scoticism of Robin's, and appears to be a term denoting hearty welcome.)

There was a delighted squeal and the sound of pattering feet. Next ensued a period of rather audible osculation, and then there was silence. Presently Phillis said—

"What shall we do? Shall I sing you a hymn?"

Evidently the revels were about to commence.

"I have just learned a new one," she continued. "I heared it in Church yesterday afternoon, so I brought it home and changed it a bit. It's called 'Onward, Chwistian Sailors!'"

"'Soldiers,' isn't it?"

"No—'Sailors.' Itwas'Soldiers,' but I like sailors much better than soldiers, so I changed it. I'll sing it now."

"Wait till Sunday," said Robin, with much presence of mind. "Will you not tell me a story?"

This idea appeared so good that Phillis began forthwith.

"Once there were three horses what lived in a stable. Two was wise and one was just a foolish young horse. There was some wolves what lived quite near the stable——"

"Wolves?" said my secretary, in tones of mild surprise.

"The stable," explained Phillis, "stood in the midst of the snowy plains of Muscovy. I should have telled you that before."

"Just so," said Robin gravely. "Go on."

"Well, one day," continued the narratress's voice through the curtains—I knew the story by heart, so I was able to fill up the gaps for myself when she dropped to a confidential whisper—"one cold, windy, berleak day, the old wolves said to the young ones, 'How about a meal of meat?' and all the young one's said, 'Oh,let's!'

"That very morning," continued Phillis in the impressive bass which she reserves for the most exciting parts of her narrative, "thatverymorning the foolish young horse said to the old horses, 'Who is for a scamper to-day?' Then he began to wiggle and wiggle at his halter. The old horses said, 'There is wolves outside, and our master says that they eat all sheep an' cattle an' horses,' But the young horse just wiggled and wiggled,"—I could hear my daughter suiting the action to the word upon her audience's knee,—"and pwesently his halter was off! Then out he rushed, kicking up the nimble snow with his feathery heels, and—what?"

Robin, who was automatically murmuring something about transferred epithets, apologised for this pedantic lapse, and the tale proceeded.

"Well, just as he was goin' to have one more scamper, he felt a growl—a awful, fearful, deepgrowl,"—Phillis's voice sank to a bloodcurdling and continuous gurgle—"and he terrembled, like this! I'll show you——"

She slipped off Robin's knee, and I knew that she was now on the hearth-rug, simulating acute palsy for his benefit.

"Then he felt somefing on his back, then somefing further up his back, then a bite at his neck; and then he felt his head bitten off, and he died. Now you tell me one."

"Which?"

Phillis considered.

"The one about the Kelpie and the Wee Bit Lassie."

Robin obliged. At first he stumbled a little, and had to be prompted in hoarse whispers by Phillis (who apparently had heard the story several times before); but as the narrative progressed and the adventures of the wee bit lassie grew more enthralling and the Kelpie more terrifying, he became almost as immersed as his audience. When I peeped through the curtain they were both sitting on the hearth-rug pressed close together, Phillis gripping one of Robin's enormous hands in a pleasurable condition of terrified interest. The fair copy of the "Importation of Mad Dogs Bill," I regret to say, lay on the floor under the table. I retired to my arm-chair.

"The Kelpie," Robin continued, "came closer and closer behind her. Already she could feel a hot breath on her neck." (So could Robin on his, for that matter.) "But she did not give in. She ran faster and faster until——"

"You've forgotten to say she could hear its webbed feet goingpad padover the slippery stanes," interpolated Phillis anxiously.

"So I did. I'm sorry. She could hear its webbed feet goingpad padover the slippery stanes. Presently though, she came to a wee bit housie on the moor. It was empty, but she slippit through the yard-gate and flew along the path and in at the door. The Kelpie came flying through the gate——"

"No, no—it loupit ower the dyke!" screamed Phillis, who would countenance no tamperings with the original text.

"Oh, yes. It loupit ower the dyke, but the wee lassie just slammed the door in its face, and turned the key. Then she felt round in the dark and keeked about, wondering what kind of place she was in. And at that very moment, through a bit window in the wall——"

"She went ben first."

"Oh, yes. She went ben; and at that very moment, through the bit window in the back-end of the house, there came a ray of light. The sun——"

"The sun had risen," declaimed Phillis, triumphantly taking up the tale; "and with one wild sheriek of disappointed rage the Kelpie vanished away, and the wee lassie wassaved!"

There was a rapt pause after this exciting anecdote. Then Phillis remarked—

"Uncle Robin, let's write that story down, and then I can get people to read it to me."

"Why not write it down for yourself?"

"I can't write—much; and it ought to be writed in ink, and I—I am only allowed to use pencil," explained my daughter, not without a certain bitterness. "But I put the lead in my mouf," she added defiantly.

At this moment the door of my apartment was hurled open, and Gerald projected himself into the room. It was the evening before his return to school, and there was a predatory look in his eye. He was accompanied by his speechless friend.

"Adrian, old son," he began, in such tones as an orator might address to a refractory mob, "Moke and I are going to have a study next term, and we want some furniture."

I mildly remarked that in my day furniture was supplied by the school authorities.

"Yes, but I mean pictures and things. Can you give us one? We shall want something to go on that wall opposite the window, shan't we, Moke? The place where young Lee missed your head with the red-ink bottle.Haveyou got a picture handy, Adrian?"

I replied in the negative.

Gerald took not the slightest notice.

"It will have to be a pretty big one," he continued. "There is a good lot of red ink to cover. I have been taking a look round the house, and I must say the pictures you've got are a fairly mangy lot—aren't they, Moke?"

The gentleman addressed coughed deprecatingly, and looked at me as much as to say that, whatever he thought of my taste in art, he had eaten my salt and would refrain from criticism.

"There's one that might do, though," continued Gerald. "It's hanging in the billiard-room—a big steamer in a storm."

By this time Phillis and Robin had joined the conclave.

"I know," said Phillis, nodding her head; "a great beautiful boat in some waves. I should fink it was a friend of theGreat Eastern's," she added, referring to an antiquated print of the early Victorian leviathan which hung in the nursery.

"We could take it for a term or two, anyhow," continued Gerald, "until we get something better. I'm expecting some really decent ones after summer. Ainsliemajoris leaving then, and he has promised to let me have some of his cheap. Then you can have yours back, Adrian. That's the scheme! Come on, Moke, we'll go and take it down now. Thanks very much, old chap" (to me). "I'll tell Kitty that you've let us. We can jab it off its hook with a billiard-cue, I should think, Moke. Come too, will you, Mr Fordyce? You can stand underneath and catch it, in case it comes down with a run. So long, Adrian!"

The whole pack of them swept from the room, leaving the door open.

When I looked in at the billiard-room on my way up to dress for dinner an hour later, nothing remained to mark the spot hitherto occupied by a signed and numbered proof ofAn Ocean Greyhound, by Michael Angelo Mahlstaff, A.R.A. (a wedding gift to my wife and myself from the artist), but the imprints of several hot hands on the wall, together with a series of parallel perpendicular scars, apparently inflicted by a full-sized harrow.

From which two chapters it will be gathered that Robert Chalmers Fordyce was a man capable, in his ordinary working-day, of playing many parts.

My wife and I would have been more than human if we had not occasionally cast a curious eye upon the relations of Robin and the Twins.

Of Robin's attitude towards that pair of charmers Kitty could make little and I nothing. He kept his place and went his own way—rather ostentatiously, I thought—and appeared if anything to avoid them. If he found himself in their company he treated them with a certain grave reticence—he soon grew out of his fondness for addressing us like a public meeting—and made little attempt to bestow upon them the attentions which young maidens are accustomed to receive from young men.

There was no mystery about the Twins' attitude towards Robin. "Here," said they in effect, "is a fine upstanding young man, full of promise, but hampered in every direction by abysmal ignorance on matters of vital importance. His instincts are sound, but at present he is quite impossible. What he wants is mothering."

And so they mothered him, most maternally. They exerted themselves quite strenuously to instil into him the fundamental principles of life—the correct method of tying a dress tie; the intricate ritual which governs such things as visiting-cards and asparagus; the exact limit of the domains of brown boots and dinner-jackets; the utter criminality of dickeys, turn-down collars, and side-whiskers; and the superiority of dialogue to monologue as a concomitant to afternoon tea.

In many respects, they discovered with pleased surprise, their pupil required no instruction or surveillance. For instance, he could always be trusted to enter or leave a room without awkwardness, and his manner of address was perfect. He was neither servile nor familiar, and the only people to whom I ever saw him pay marked deference were the members of what is after all the only real and natural aristocracy in the world—that of old age.

All their ministrations Robin received with grave wonder—he was not of the sort that can easily magnify a fetish into a deity—but, evidently struck by the intense importance attached by the Twins to their own doctrines, he showed himself a most amenable pupil. Probably he realised, in spite of hereditary preference for inward worth as opposed to outward show, that though a coat cannot make a man, a good man in a good coat often has the advantage of a good man in a bad coat. So he allowed the Twins to round off his corners; and, without losing any of his original ruggedness of character or toughness of fibre, he soon developed into a well-groomed and sufficiently presentable adjunct—quite distinguished-looking, Dilly said, when she met us one day on our way down to the House—to a lady's morning walk.

What he really thought of it all I do not know. I have a kind of suspicion that deep down in his heart every Scot entertains a contempt for the volatile and frivolous English which is only equalled by that of the English for the nation to whom I once heard a Highland minister refer as "the giddy and godless French"; but Robin was not given to the revelation of his private thoughts. He seldom spoke of the Twins to me—he was a discusser of manners rather than men—but he once remarked that they were girls of widely different character. He entered into no further details, but I remember being struck by the observation at the time; for I had always regarded my sisters-in-law as being as identical in disposition as they were in appearance.

Still it was pretty to see Robin unbending to please the two girls, and to hear him say "No, really?" or "My word, what rot!" when you knew that his tongue was itching to cry, "Is that a fact?" or "Hoots!" or "Havers!" as the occasion demanded.

He also possessed the great and unique merit of not being ashamed to ask for guidance in a difficulty. I have known him pause before an unfamiliar dish at table and ask one of his preceptresses, in the frankest manner possible, whether the exigencies of the situation called for a spoon or a fork: and out of doors it was a perpetual joy to hear him whisper, on the approach of some one whom he thought might be a friend of ours, "Will I lift my hat?"

All that year Robin was my right hand. It was a long session; and as my Chief sat in the Upper House, much work in the way of answering questions and making statements fell upon me. We had a good working majority, but the Opposition were a united and well-organised body that year, and we had to rise early and go to bed late to keep their assaults at bay while proceeding with the programme of the session. Every afternoon, before I entered the House to take my place at question-time, my secretary insisted on taking me through the answers which he had prepared for my recitation; and we also discussed the line of action to be pursued if I were cornered by questions of the "arising-out-of-that-answer" order.

Personally, I loathed this part of the work—I am a departmentalist pure and simple—but Robin's eye used to glow with the light of battle as he rehearsed me in the undoubtedly telling counters with which I was to pulverise the foe.

"I would like fine," he once said to me, "to stand up in your place and answer these questions for you."

"I wish you could, Robin," I sighed. "And," I added, "I believe you will some day."

Robin turned pink, for the first time in our acquaintance, and I heard his teeth click suddenly together.

So the wind lay that way!

During the next year my household was furnished with three surprises, Dilly contributing one and Robin two.

Robin's came first. One was his uncle, the other his book.

One night it fell to my lot to dine in the City, as the guest of the Honourable Company of Tile-Glazers and Mortar-Mixers. As I swam forlornly through a turgid ocean of turtle-soup and clarified punch towards an unyielding continent of fish, irrigated by brown sherry, mechanically rehearsing to myself the series of sparkling yet statesmanlike epigrams with which I proposed to reply to the toast of his Majesty's Ministers I became aware that the gentleman on my left was addressing me in a voice that seemed vaguely familiar.

"And how is my brother's second boy doing with you, Mr Inglethwaite?"

I must have looked a trifle blank, for he added—

"My nephew, Robin."

I glanced obliquely at the card which marked his place at table, and read—

Sir James Fordyce.

Then I began to grasp the situation, and I realised that this great man, whose name was honourably known wherever the ills of childhood are combated, was Robin's uncle, the "doctor" to whom my secretary had casually referred, and whom he occasionally went to visit on Sunday afternoons. I had pictured an overdriven G.P., living in Bloomsbury or Balham, with a black bag, and a bulge in his hat where he kept his stethoscope. A man sufficiently distinguished to represent his profession at a public banquet was more than I had bargained for.

We became friends at once, and supported each other, so to speak, amid the multitude of dinners and dishes, our respective neighbours proving but broken reeds so far as social intercourse was concerned. On Sir James's left, I remember, sat a plethoric gentleman whose burnished countenance gave him the appearance of a sort of incarnate Glazed Tile; while my right-hand neighbour, from the manner in which he manipulated the food upon his plate, I put down without hesitation as a Mortar Mixer of high standing.

The old gentleman gave me a good deal of information about Robin.

"He had a hard fight his first year or two in London," he said. "I could see by the way he fell upon his dinner when he came to my house that his meat and drink were not easily come by. Still, now that he has won through, he will not regret the experience. I had it myself. It is the finest training that a young man can receive. Hard, terribly hard, but invaluable! You will not have seen his father yet—my brother John?"

I told him no.

"Well, try and meet him. You, as an Englishman, would perhaps call him hard and narrow,—after forty years of London I sometimes find him so myself,—but he is a fine man, and he has a good wife. So have you," he added unexpectedly—"Robin has told me that."

I laughed, in what the Twins call the "silly little gratified way" which obtrudes itself into my demeanour when any one praises Kitty.

"I hope you are in the same happy situation," I said.

"No, I am a bachelor. My brother John has not achieved a K.C.B., but he is a more fortunate man than I."

The conversation dropped here, but I repeated it to my wife afterwards.

"Of course, the whole thing is as clear as daylight," she said. "These two brothers both wanted to marry the same girl. She took the farmer one, so the other, poor thing, went off to London and became a famous doctor instead. That's all. He might have been Robin's father, but he's only his uncle."

Happy the mind which can reconstruct a romance out of such scanty material.

Sir James ultimately dined at my house, and became a firm friend of all that dwelt therein, especially Phillis.

Then came Robin's second surprise—his book. It was a novel, and a very good novel too. He had been at it for some time, he told me, but it was only recently that he had contrived to finish it off. Being distrustful of its merits, he had decided to offer it to just one good publisher, who could take it or leave it. If he took it, well and good. But if the publisher (and possibly just one other) exhibited an attitude of aloofness, Robin had fully decided not to hawk his bantling about among other less reputable and more amenable firms, but to consign it to his bedroom fire.

However, this inhuman but only-too-unusual sacrifice of the parental instinct was averted by the one good publisher, who accepted the book, and introduced Robin to the public.

Either through shyness or indifference Robin had told us nothing of the approaching interesting event, and it was not until one morning in October, when a parcel of complimentary copies arrived from the publisher's, that we were apprised of the fact that we had been cherishing an author in our midst. Robin solemnly presented us with a copy apiece (which I thought handsome but extravagant), and also sent one to his parents, who, though I think they rather doubted the propriety of possessing a son who wrote novels at all, wrote back comparing it very favourably withThe Pilgrim's Progress, the only other work of fiction with which they were acquainted.

The book itself dealt with matters rather than men, and with men rather than women; which was characteristic of its author, but rather irritating for the Twins. It had a good deal to say about the under-side of journalism,—graphic and convincing, all this,—and contained a rather technical but absorbingly interesting account of some most exciting financial operations, winding up with a great description of a panic on the Stock Exchange. But there were few light and no tender passages, from which it will be seen that Robin as an author appealed to the male rather than the female intellect.

The Twins, I think, were secretly rather disappointed with the book, less from any particular fondness for the perusal of love-passages than from a truly human desire to note how Robin would have handled them; for it is always interesting to see to what extent our friends will give themselves away when they commit the indiscretion of a book. On this occasion Robin had been exasperatingly self-contained.

But life is full of compensations. There was a dedication. It read:—

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