y Taylor's edifying
though humour-lacking treatise on the act of dying, which I am sorely
tempted to label "The Rule and Example of Eumoiriety." I shall resist
the temptation, however. Dale Kynnersley--such is the ignorance of the
new generation--would have no sense of the allusion. He would shake his
head and say, "Dotty, poor old chap, dotty!" I can hear him. And if, in
order to prepare him, I gave him a copy of the "Meditations," he
would fling the book across the room and qualify Marcus Aurelius as a
"rotter."

Dale is a very shrewd fellow, and will make an admirable legislator
when his time comes. Although his highest intellectual recreation is
reiterated attendance at the musical comedy that has caught his fancy
for the moment and his favourite literature the sporting pages of the
daily papers, he has a curious feline pounce on the salient facts of
a political situation, and can thread the mazes of statistics with the
certainty of a Hampton Court guide. His enthusiastic researches (on my
behalf) into pauper lunacy are remarkable in one so young. I foresee
him an invaluable chairman of committee. But he will never become a
statesman. He has too passionate a faith in facts and figures, and has
not cultivated a sense of humour at the expense of the philosophers.
Young men who do not read them lose a great deal of fun.

Well, to-morrow I leave Murglebed for ever; it has my benison.
Democritus returns to London.

CHAPTER II

I was at breakfast on the morning after my arrival in London, when Dale
Kynnersley rushed in and seized me violently by the hand.

"By Jove, here you are at last!"

I smoothed my crushed fingers. "You have such a vehement manner of
proclaiming the obvious, my dear Dale."

"Oh, rot!" he said. "Here, Rogers, give me some tea--and I think I'll
have some toast and marmalade."

"Haven't you breakfasted?"

A cloud overspread his ingenuous countenance.

"I came down late, and everything was cold and mother was on edge.
The girls are always doing the wrong things and I never do the right
ones--you know the mater--so I swallowed a tepid kidney and rushed off."

"Save for her worries over you urchins," said I, "I hope Lady Kynnersley
is well?"

He filled his mouth with toast and marmalade, and nodded. He is a
good-looking boy, four-and-twenty--idyllic age! He has sleek black hair
brushed back from his forehead over his head, an olive complexion, and
a keen, open, clean-shaven face. He wor