a magnificent
spectacle to see them fight, and they had for each other a regard which,
if it was never tender, had every element of respect.

They worked now for some time in silence. Suddenly Lady Staines cocked a
wintry blue eye in her son's direction and remarked, "Why ain't your
wife going with you to Davos?" Winn hurled a bulb into the small hole
prepared for it before answering, then he said:

"She's too delicate to stand the cold."

"Is there anything the matter with her?" asked his mother.

Winn preferred to consider this question in the light of rhetoric and
made no reply. He wasn't going to give Estelle away by saying there was
nothing the matter with her, and on the other hand a lie would have been
pounced upon and torn to pieces. "Marriage don't seem to have agreed
with either of you particularly well," observed Lady Staines with a grim
smile.

"We haven't got your constitution," replied her son. "If either you or
Father had married any one else--they'd have been dead within six
months."

"Humph!" said his mother. "That only shows our sound judgment; we took
what we could stomach! It's her look-out of course, but I suppose she
knows she's running you into the Divorce Court, letting you go out there
by yourself? All those snow places bristle with grass widows and girls
who have outstayed their market and have to get a hustle on! Sending a
man out there alone is like driving a new-born lamb into a pack of
wolves!" Lady Staines with her eye on the heavily built and rather
leathery lamb beside her gave a sardonic chuckle. Winn ignored her
illustration.

"You needn't be afraid," he replied. "I'm done with women; they tempt me
about as much as stale sponge cakes."

"Ah!" said his mother, "I've heard that tale before. A man who says he's
done with women simply means one of them's done with him. Besides,
you're to be an invalid, I understand! An invalid man is as exposed to
women as a young chicken to rats. You won't stand a ghost of a chance.
Look at your father, if I left him alone when he was having an attack of
gout with a gray-haired matron of a reformatory, he'd be on his knees to
her before I could get back."

"You can take it from me," said Winn, "that even if I _should_ need such
a thing as a petticoat, I'd try a kind that won't affect marriage. I'll
never look at another good woman again--the other sort will do for me if
I can't stick it without."

"Don't racket too much," said Lady Staines,