that lent itself admirably to the discussion of a
youngster's transgressions.

Medenham had a sense of humor denied to his well-meaning sire. He
recalled the last time he had heard those words. He and another sprig
of nobility had come up to London from Winchester without leave in
order to attend a famous glove contest between heavyweights, and there
had been wigs on the green before an irate head-master would even
deign to flog them. That had happened twelve years ago, almost to a
day. Since then he had fought through a great war, had circled the
globe, had sought the wild places of earth and its monsters in their
lairs. He knew men and matters as his father had never known them. A
Prime Minister had urged him to adopt a political career, and had
virtually promised him a colonial under-secretaryship as soon as he
entered parliament. He held the D.S.O., had been thanked by the Royal
Geographical Society for a paper on Kilimanjaro, and cordially invited
by the Foreign Office to send in any further notes in his possession.
Months later, he heard that Sir Somebody Something was deeply
interested in his comments on the activity of a certain Great Power in
the neighborhood of Britain's chief coaling-stations in the Indian
Ocean.

The absurdity of a family conclave in which he should again be treated
as a small boy, and admonished to apologize and be flogged, while it
brought a smile to his lips, banished any notion of angry
remonstrance.

"By 'all about it' I suppose you mean that you wish to hear what I
have been doing since last Wednesday," he said pleasantly. "Well, dad,
I have obeyed your orders. You asked me to find a wife worthy to reign
at Fairholme. I have succeeded."

"You don't mean to say you have _married_ her!" shouted the Earl, in a
purple upheaval of rage whose lightning-like abruptness was not its
least amazing feature. Certainly Medenham was taken aback by it.
Indeed, he was almost alarmed, though he had no knowledge of apoplexy
in the family.

"I have not even asked the lady yet," he said quietly. "I hope--I
think--that the idea will not be disagreeable to her; but a future
Countess of Fairholme is not to be carried by storm in that fashion.
We must get to know her people----"

"D----n her people!" broke in the older man. "Have you taken leave of
your wits, George, to stand there and talk such infernal nonsense?"

"Steady, dad, steady!" and the quiet voice grew still more calm,
though the forehea