the extreme.'

"And if, by any chance, my darling," he said, "you found you didn't get
on--with them, why, I could make that all right. You could have what you
liked. We could find a little flat in London where you could set up,
and I could be running to continually. But the children," he added, "are
dear little things!"

Then, in the midst of this grave, rather transparent, explanation of
changed policy, his eyes twinkled. "This'll astonish Timothy's weak
nerves. That precious young thing will have something to say about this,
or I'm a Dutchman!"

June had not yet spoken. Perched thus on the arm of his chair, with her
head above him, her face was invisible. But presently he felt her warm
cheek against his own, and knew that, at all events, there was nothing
very alarming in her attitude towards his news. He began to take
courage.

"You'll like your father," he said--"an amiable chap. Never was much
push about him, but easy to get on with. You'll find him artistic and
all that."

And old Jolyon bethought him of the dozen or so water-colour drawings
all carefully locked up in his bedroom; for now that his son was going
to become a man of property he did not think them quite such poor things
as heretofore.

"As to your--your stepmother," he said, using the word with some little
difficulty, "I call her a refined woman--a bit of a Mrs. Gummidge,
I shouldn't wonder--but very fond of Jo. And the children," he
repeated--indeed, this sentence ran like music through all his solemn
self-justification--"are sweet little things!"

If June had known, those words but reincarnated that tender love for
little children, for the young and weak, which in the past had made
him desert his son for her tiny self, and now, as the cycle rolled, was
taking him from her.

But he began to get alarmed at her silence, and asked impatiently:
"Well, what do you say?"

June slid down to his knee, and she in her turn began her tale. She
thought it would all go splendidly; she did not see any difficulty, and
she did not care a bit what people thought.

Old Jolyon wriggled. H'm! then people would think! He had thought that
after all these years perhaps they wouldn't! Well, he couldn't help it!
Nevertheless, he could not approve of his granddaughter's way of putting
it--she ought to mind what people thought!

Yet he said nothing. His feelings were too mixed, too inconsistent for
expression.

No--went on June he did not care; what business