ual skill and
enjoyment. The only thing against him was his income, which was very
small. He had taken in Mrs. Brandwhite, to whom, however, he talked but
little, leaving her to General Pendyce, her neighbour on the other side.

Had he been born a year before his brother, instead of a year after,
Charles Pendyce would naturally have owned Worsted Skeynes, and Horace
would have gone into the Army instead. As it was, having almost
imperceptibly become a Major-General, he had retired, taking with him his
pension. The third brother, had he chosen to be born, would have gone
into the Church, where a living awaited him; he had elected otherwise,
and the living had passed perforce to a collateral branch. Between
Horace and Charles, seen from behind, it was difficult to distinguish.
Both were spare, both erect, with the least inclination to bottle
shoulders, but Charles Pendyce brushed his hair, both before and behind,
away from a central parting, and about the back of his still active knees
there was a look of feebleness. Seen from the front they could readily
be differentiated, for the General's whiskers broadened down his cheeks
till they reached his moustaches, and there was in his face and manner a
sort of formal, though discontented, effacement, as of an individualist
who has all his life been part of a system, from which he has issued at
last, unconscious indeed of his loss, but with a vague sense of injury.
He had never married, feeling it to be comparatively useless, owing to
Horace having gained that year on him at the start, and he lived with a
valet close to his club in Pall Mall.

In Lady Maiden, whom he had taken in to dinner, Worsted Skeynes
entertained a good woman and a personality, whose teas to Working Men in
the London season were famous. No Working Man who had attended them had
ever gone away without a wholesome respect for his hostess. She was
indeed a woman who permitted no liberties to be taken with her in any
walk of life. The daughter of a Rural Dean, she appeared at her best
when seated, having rather short legs. Her face was well-coloured, her
mouth, firm and rather wide, her nose well-shaped, her hair dark. She
spoke in a decided voice, and did not mince her words. It was to her
that her husband, Sir James, owed his reactionary principles on the
subject of woman.

Round the corner at the end of the table the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow was
telling his hostess of the Balkan Provinces, from a to