," he once said to me, "to stand up in your place and
answer these questions for you."

"I wish you could, Robin," I sighed. "And," I added, "I believe you will
some day."

Robin turned pink, for the first time in our acquaintance, and I heard
his teeth click suddenly together.

So the wind lay that way!

II.

During the next year my household was furnished with three surprises,
Dilly contributing one and Robin two.

Robin's came first. One was his uncle, the other his book.

One night it fell to my lot to dine in the City, as the guest of the
Honourable Company of Tile-Glazers and Mortar-Mixers. As I swam
forlornly through a turgid ocean of turtle-soup and clarified punch
towards an unyielding continent of fish, irrigated by brown sherry,
mechanically rehearsing to myself the series of sparkling yet
statesmanlike epigrams with which I proposed to reply to the toast of
his Majesty's Ministers I became aware that the gentleman on my left was
addressing me in a voice that seemed vaguely familiar.

"And how is my brother's second boy doing with you, Mr Inglethwaite?"

I must have looked a trifle blank, for he added--

"My nephew, Robin."

I glanced obliquely at the card which marked his place at table, and
read--

_Sir James Fordyce._

Then I began to grasp the situation, and I realised that this great man,
whose name was honourably known wherever the ills of childhood are
combated, was Robin's uncle, the "doctor" to whom my secretary had
casually referred, and whom he occasionally went to visit on Sunday
afternoons. I had pictured an overdriven G.P., living in Bloomsbury or
Balham, with a black bag, and a bulge in his hat where he kept his
stethoscope. A man sufficiently distinguished to represent his
profession at a public banquet was more than I had bargained for.

We became friends at once, and supported each other, so to speak, amid
the multitude of dinners and dishes, our respective neighbours proving
but broken reeds so far as social intercourse was concerned. On Sir
James's left, I remember, sat a plethoric gentleman whose burnished
countenance gave him the appearance of a sort of incarnate Glazed Tile;
while my right-hand neighbour, from the manner in which he manipulated
the food upon his plate, I put down without hesitation as a Mortar Mixer
of high standing.

The old gentleman gave me a good deal of information about Robin.

"He had a hard fight his first year or two in London," he