No seat, he says, among the
Wise, unless we've been through it all before we climb! That's how he
strikes me--not too cheering for people of our sort!"

Under the shadow of this bust Hilary rested his forehead on his hand. In
front of him were three open books and a pile of manuscript, and pushed
to one side a little sheaf of pieces of green-white paper, press-cuttings
of his latest book.

The exact position occupied by his work in the life of such a man is not
too easy to define. He earned an income by it, but he was not dependent
on that income. As poet, critic, writer of essays, he had made himself a
certain name--not a great name, but enough to swear by. Whether his
fastidiousness could have stood the conditions of literary existence
without private means was now and then debated by his friends; it could
probably have done so better than was supposed, for he sometimes startled
those who set him down as a dilettante by a horny way of retiring into
his shell for the finish of a piece of work.

Try as he would that morning to keep his thoughts concentrated on his
literary labour, they wandered to his conversation with his niece and to
the discussion on Mrs. Hughs; the family seamstress, in his wife's studio
the day before. Stephen had lingered behind Cecilia and Thyme when they
went away after dinner, to deliver a last counsel to his brother at the
garden gate.

"Never meddle between man and wife--you know what the lower classes are!"

And across the dark garden he had looked back towards the house. One
room on the ground-floor alone was lighted. Through its open window the
head and shoulders of Mr. Stone could be seen close to a small green
reading-lamp. Stephen shook his head, murmuring:

"But, I say, our old friend, eh? 'In those places--in those streets!'
It's worse than simple crankiness--the poor old chap is getting
almost---"

And, touching his forehead lightly with two fingers, he had hurried off
with the ever-springy step of one whose regularity habitually controls
his imagination.

Pausing a minute amongst the bushes, Hilary too had looked at the lighted
window which broke the dark front of his house, and his little moonlight
bulldog, peering round his legs, had gazed up also. Mr. Stone was still
standing, pen in hand, presumably deep in thought. His silvered head and
beard moved slightly to the efforts of his brain. He came over to the
window, and, evidently not seeing his son-in-law, fac