t it was but
a memory. "You will be quiet here, and we can shut out the bed and
washstand with a screen."

So my father had his way. It was a pleasant, sunny little room,
overlooking the gardens of the hospital. I followed my father's
suggestion, shut out the bed and washstand with a screen. And sometimes
of an evening it would amuse me to hear my father turn the handle of the
door.

"How are you getting on--all right?"

"Famously."

Often there came back to me the words he had once used. "You must be the
practical man, Paul, and get on. Myself, I have always been somewhat of
a dreamer. I meant to do such great things in the world, and somehow I
suppose I aimed too high. I wasn't--practical."

"But ought not one to aim high?" I had asked.

My father had fidgeted in his chair. "It is very difficult to say. It
is all so--so very ununderstandable. You aim high and you don't hit
anything--at least, it seems as if you didn't. Perhaps, after all, it
is better to aim at something low, and--and hit it. Yet it seems a
pity--one's ideals, all the best part of one--I don't know why it is.
Perhaps we do not understand."

For some months I had been writing over my own name. One day a letter
was forwarded to me by an editor to whose care it had been addressed. It
was a short, formal note from the maternal Sellars, inviting me to
the wedding of her daughter with a Mr. Reginald Clapper. I had
almost forgotten the incident of the Lady 'Ortensia, but it was not
unsatisfactory to learn that it had terminated pleasantly. Also, I
judged from an invitation having been sent me, that the lady wished
me to be witness of the fact that my desertion had not left her
disconsolate. So much gratification I felt I owed her, and accordingly,
purchasing a present as expensive as my means would permit, I made
my way on the following Thursday, clad in frock coat and light grey
trousers, to Kennington Church.

The ceremony was already in progress. Creeping on tiptoe up the aisle,
I was about to slip into an empty pew, when a hand was laid upon my
sleeve.

"We're all here," whispered the O'Kelly; "just room for ye."

Squeezing his hand as I passed, I sat down between the Signora and Mrs.
Peedles. Both ladies were weeping; the Signora silently, one tear at a
time clinging fondly to her pretty face as though loath to fall from
it; Mrs. Peedles copiously, with explosive gurgles, as of water from a
bottle.

"It is such a beautiful service," murm