said. "I could
see by the way he fell upon his dinner when he came to my house that his
meat and drink were not easily come by. Still, now that he has won
through, he will not regret the experience. I had it myself. It is the
finest training that a young man can receive. Hard, terribly hard, but
invaluable! You will not have seen his father yet--my brother John?"

I told him no.

"Well, try and meet him. You, as an Englishman, would perhaps call him
hard and narrow,--after forty years of London I sometimes find him so
myself,--but he is a fine man, and he has a good wife. So have you," he
added unexpectedly--"Robin has told me that."

I laughed, in what the Twins call the "silly little gratified way" which
obtrudes itself into my demeanour when any one praises Kitty.

"I hope you are in the same happy situation," I said.

"No, I am a bachelor. My brother John has not achieved a K.C.B., but he
is a more fortunate man than I."

The conversation dropped here, but I repeated it to my wife afterwards.

"Of course, the whole thing is as clear as daylight," she said. "These
two brothers both wanted to marry the same girl. She took the farmer
one, so the other, poor thing, went off to London and became a famous
doctor instead. That's all. He might have been Robin's father, but he's
only his uncle."

Happy the mind which can reconstruct a romance out of such scanty
material.

Sir James ultimately dined at my house, and became a firm friend of all
that dwelt therein, especially Phillis.

Then came Robin's second surprise--his book. It was a novel, and a very
good novel too. He had been at it for some time, he told me, but it was
only recently that he had contrived to finish it off. Being distrustful
of its merits, he had decided to offer it to just one good publisher,
who could take it or leave it. If he took it, well and good. But if the
publisher (and possibly just one other) exhibited an attitude of
aloofness, Robin had fully decided not to hawk his bantling about among
other less reputable and more amenable firms, but to consign it to his
bedroom fire.

However, this inhuman but only-too-unusual sacrifice of the parental
instinct was averted by the one good publisher, who accepted the book,
and introduced Robin to the public.

Either through shyness or indifference Robin had told us nothing of the
approaching interesting event, and it was not until one morning in
October, when a parcel of complimentary copies a