It was Strickland's version of the Holy Family. I suspected
that for the figures had sat his household above Taravao,
and the woman and the baby were Ata and his first son.
I asked myself if Mrs. Strickland had any inkling of the facts.

The conversation proceeded, and I marvelled at the tact with which
Mr. Van Busche Taylor avoided all subjects that might have been
in the least embarrassing, and at the ingenuity with which
Mrs. Strickland, without saying a word that was untrue, insinuated
that her relations with her husband had always been perfect.
At last Mr. Van Busche Taylor rose to go. Holding his
hostess' hand, he made her a graceful, though perhaps too elaborate,
speech of thanks, and left us.

"I hope he didn't bore you," she said, when the door closed
behind him. "Of course it's a nuisance sometimes, but I feel
it's only right to give people any information I can about Charlie.
There's a certain responsibility about having been the
wife of a genius."

She looked at me with those pleasant eyes of hers, which had
remained as candid and as sympathetic as they had been more
than twenty years before. I wondered if she was making a fool of me.

"Of course you've given up your business," I said.

"Oh, yes," she answered airily. "I ran it more by way of a
hobby than for any other reason, and my children persuaded me
to sell it. They thought I was overtaxing my strength."

I saw that Mrs. Strickland had forgotten that she had ever
done anything so disgraceful as to work for her living.
She had the true instinct of the nice woman that it is only
really decent for her to live on other people's money.

"They're here now," she said. "I thought they'd, like to hear
what you had to say about their father. You remember Robert,
don't you? I'm glad to say he's been recommended for the
Military Cross."

She went to the door and called them. There entered a tall
man in khaki, with the parson's collar, handsome in a somewhat
heavy fashion, but with the frank eyes that I remembered in
him as a boy. He was followed by his sister. She must have
been the same age as was her mother when first I knew her, and
she was very like her. She too gave one the impression that
as a girl she must have been prettier than indeed she was.

"I suppose you don't remember them in the least," said
Mrs. Strickland, proud and smiling. "My daughter is now
Mrs. Ronaldson. Her husband's a Major in the Gunners."

"He's by way of bein