and the experience of being
nursed was so novel that Ironsyde endured it without a murmur. To
Estelle, who did not guess he was rather enjoying it, the spectacle of
his patience under pain awoke admiration. Indeed, she thought him most
heroic and he made no effort to undeceive her.

Incidentally, during his brief convalescence the man saw more of his
aunt than he had seen for many days. She also must needs nurse him and
exhaust her ingenuity to pass the time. The room was kept dark for
eight-and-forty hours, so her method of entertaining her nephew
consisted chiefly in conversation.

Of late years Raymond seldom let a week elapse without seeing Miss
Ironsyde if only for half an hour. Her waning health occupied him on
these occasions and, at his suggestion, she had gone to Bath to fight
the arthritis that slowly gained upon her. But during his present
sojourn at Bridport as her guest, Raymond let her lead their talk as she
would, indeed, he himself sometimes led it into channels of the past,
where she would not have ventured to go.

Life had made an immense difference to the man and he was old for his
age now, even as until his brother's death he had been young for his
age. She could not fail to note the steadfastness of his mind, despite
its limitations. As Estelle had often done, she perceived how he set
his faith on material things--the steel and steam--to bring about a new
order and advance the happiness of mankind; but he was interested in
social questions far more than of old time, and she felt no little
surprise to hear him talk about the future.

"The air is full of change," she said, on one occasion.

"It always is," he answered. "There is always movement, although the
breath of advance and progress seems to sink to nothing, sometimes. Now
it's blowing a stiff breeze and may rise to a hurricane in a few years."

"It is for the stable, solid backbone of the nation--we of the
middle-class--to withstand such storms," she declared, and he agreed.

"If you've got a stake in the world, you must certainly see its
foundations are driven deep and look to the stake itself, that it's not
rotting. Some stakes are certainly not made of stuff stout enough to
stand against the storms ahead. Education is the great, vital thing. I
often feel mad to think how I wasted my own time at school, and came to
man's work a raw, ignorant fool. We talk of the education of the masses
and what I see is this: they will soon be better e