was father, of course! Val did come 'like a shot' at six o'clock.

Imagine a cross between a pickle and a Forsyte and you have young Publius
Valerius Dartie. A youth so named could hardly turn out otherwise. When
he was born, Winifred, in the heyday of spirits, and the craving for
distinction, had determined that her children should have names such as
no others had ever had. (It was a mercy--she felt now--that she had
just not named Imogen Thisbe.) But it was to George Forsyte, always a
wag, that Val's christening was due. It so happened that Dartie, dining
with him a week after the birth of his son and heir, had mentioned this
aspiration of Winifred's.

"Call him Cato," said George, "it'll be damned piquant!" He had just won
a tenner on a horse of that name.

"Cato!" Dartie had replied--they were a little 'on' as the phrase was
even in those days--"it's not a Christian name."

"Halo you!" George called to a waiter in knee breeches. "Bring me the
Encyc'pedia Brit. from the Library, letter C."

The waiter brought it.

"Here you are!" said George, pointing with his cigar: "Cato Publius
Valerius by Virgil out of Lydia. That's what you want. Publius Valerius
is Christian enough."

Dartie, on arriving home, had informed Winifred. She had been charmed.
It was so 'chic.' And Publius Valerius became the baby's name, though it
afterwards transpired that they had got hold of the inferior Cato. In
1890, however, when little Publius was nearly ten, the word 'chic' went
out of fashion, and sobriety came in; Winifred began to have doubts.
They were confirmed by little Publius himself who returned from his first
term at school complaining that life was a burden to him--they called him
Pubby. Winifred--a woman of real decision--promptly changed his school
and his name to Val, the Publius being dropped even as an initial.

At nineteen he was a limber, freckled youth with a wide mouth, light
eyes, long dark lashes; a rather charming smile, considerable knowledge
of what he should not know, and no experience of what he ought to do.
Few boys had more narrowly escaped being expelled--the engaging rascal.
After kissing his mother and pinching Imogen, he ran upstairs three at a
time, and came down four, dressed for dinner. He was awfully sorry, but
his 'trainer,' who had come up too, had asked him to dine at the Oxford
and Cambridge; it wouldn't do to miss--the old chap would be hurt.
Winifred let him go with an unhappy p