ranger, with yet wider and almost
whirling gestures of explanation with his huge hat and bag,
apologized for having entered by the wall instead of the front door.
He was understood to put it down to an unfortunate family tradition
of neatness and care of his clothes.

"My mother was rather strict about it, to tell the truth,"
he said, lowering his voice, to Mrs. Duke. "She never liked
me to lose my cap at school. And when a man's been taught
to be tidy and neat it sticks to him."

Mrs. Duke weakly gasped that she was sure he must have had a good mother;
but her niece seemed inclined to probe the matter further.

"You've got a funny idea of neatness," she said, "if it's
jumping garden walls and clambering up garden trees.
A man can't very well climb a tree tidily."

"He can clear a wall neatly," said Michael Moon; "I saw him do it."

Smith seemed to be regarding the girl with genuine astonishment.
"My dear young lady," he said, "I was tidying the tree. You don't want
last year's hats there, do you, any more than last year's leaves?
The wind takes off the leaves, but it couldn't manage the hat; that wind,
I suppose, has tidied whole forests to-day. Rum idea this is, that tidiness
is a timid, quiet sort of thing; why, tidiness is a toil for giants.
You can't tidy anything without untidying yourself; just look at my trousers.
Don't you know that? Haven't you ever had a spring cleaning?"

"Oh yes, sir," said Mrs. Duke, almost eagerly. "You will find
everything of that sort quite nice." For the first time she
had heard two words that she could understand.

Miss Diana Duke seemed to be studying the stranger with a sort of spasm
of calculation; then her black eyes snapped with decision, and she said
that he could have a particular bedroom on the top floor if he liked:
and the silent and sensitive Inglewood, who had been on the rack through
these cross-purposes, eagerly offered to show him up to the room.
Smith went up the stairs four at a time, and when he bumped his head
against the ultimate ceiling, Inglewood had an odd sensation that the tall
house was much shorter than it used to be.

Arthur Inglewood followed his old friend--or his new friend,
for he did not very clearly know which he was. The face looked
very like his old schoolfellow's at one second and very unlike
at another. And when Inglewood broke through his native
politeness so far as to say suddenly, "Is your name Smith?"
he received only the une