nger than he did last week. A pretty fellow he is to call
himself a Pessimist.

XXXI.

RESULTS REPORTED.

I reached home in the early evening. The servant told me at the door
that Mrs. T. was in attendance on Master Herbert, who had fallen over
the banisters and injured his nasal organ. I rushed upstairs: Mabel met
me with no demonstrations of grief or anxiety. "I see by your face that
it is all right--as I always said it would be. Go to Clarice; she is in
the library. O, Herbert? He fell on his nose, of course; he always does.
It is not at all serious. The dear child has been feeling better since
we heard from you, and taking more exercise. Clarice has the first right
to your news."

I found her, and dropped on my knees. She looked at me, not so sweetly
as of late. "Get up, Robert, I thought I had cured you of your bad habit
of untimely jesting."

"You have. I realize the solemnity of the occasion, if you do not. My
name is James--no, that's not it. I am a representative, an envoy. You
see before you a banished man who has justly incurred his sovereign's
displeasure, and has repented day and night. This posture, perhaps
unseemly in the father of a family, expresses the other fellow's state
of mind. He's afraid to come himself, and so he sent me."

She looked at me again, and saw that I was serious. You see, these
delicate matters have to be managed delicately. I can't do the
unmitigated tragedy business as well as Hartman might, and yet I had to
meet the requirements of the situation, and the Princess' expectations,
which are always high. People who have their own affairs of this kind to
conduct might sometimes avoid painful failures by taking a leaf out of
my book, and mixing the difficult passages with a little--a very
little--chastened and judicious humor; then they would avoid overdoing
it, and sending the lady off disgusted.

"Does he take all the blame?"

"Absolutely: he did from the first moment. He can't come here to say so
till he's allowed, and he can't get up till you give him a token of
forgiveness."

She gave it: it was inexpensive to her, and soothing to the penitent--or
would have been if he had been there to get it in person. I took it
simply on his account.

"Keep still now, and let me think."

I kept still. The attitude of prayer, while well suited to the lighter
forms of ladies, is inconvenient to a man of my size, and deeply
distressing when I am obliged to maintain it for mor