an. For more than two years he worked ten hours a day at a
subject he loathed; he threw his whole might into it and forced out of
nature the gifts she had denied him, with the result that he got a first
class. And much good it's done him.'

Alec shrugged his shoulders.

'It wasn't that I cared for mathematics, but it taught me to conquer the
one inconvenient word in the English language.'

'And what the deuce is that?'

'I'm afraid it sounds very priggish,' laughed Alec. 'The word
_impossible_.'

Dick gave a little snort of comic rage.

'And it also gave you a ghastly pleasure in doing things that hurt you.
Oh, if you'd only been born in the Middle Ages, what a fiendish joy you
would have taken in mortifying your flesh, and in denying yourself
everything that makes life so good to live! You're never thoroughly
happy unless you're making yourself thoroughly miserable.'

'Each time I come back to England I find that you talk more and greater
nonsense, Dick,' returned Alec drily.

'I'm one of the few persons now alive who can talk nonsense,' answered
his friend, laughing. 'That's why I'm so charming. Everyone else is so
deadly earnest.'

He settled himself down to make a deliberate speech.

'I deplore the strenuousness of the world in general. There is an idea
abroad that it is praiseworthy to do things, and what they are is of no
consequence so long as you do them. I hate the mad hurry of the present
day to occupy itself. I wish I could persuade people of the excellence
of leisure.'

'One could scarcely accuse you of cultivating it yourself,' said Lucy,
smiling.

Dick looked at her for a moment thoughtfully.

'Do you know that I'm hard upon forty?'

'With the light behind, you might still pass for thirty-two,'
interrupted Mrs. Crowley.

He turned to her seriously.

'I haven't a grey hair on my head.'

'I suppose your servant plucks them out every morning?'

'Oh, no, very rarely; one a month at the outside.'

'I think I see one just beside the left temple.'

He turned quickly to the glass.

'Dear me, how careless of Charles! I shall have to give him a piece of
my mind.'

'Come here, and let me take it out,' said Mrs. Crowley.

'I will let you do nothing of the sort I should consider it most
familiar.'

'You were giving us the gratuitous piece of information that you were
nearly forty,' said Alec.

'The thought came to me the other day with something of a shock, and I
set about a scrutiny