haps I'd
better come down."

She descended immediately in an ulster and loose slippers. Edwin waited
for her in the hall.

"Now, father," she said brusquely, entering the dining-room, "what's
amiss?"

Darius gazed at her stupidly. "Nothing," he muttered.

"You're very late, I think. When did you have your last meal?"

He shook his head.

"Shall I make you some nice hot tea?"

He nodded.

"Very well," she said comfortingly.

Soon with her hair hanging about her face and hiding it, she was bending
over the gleam of fire, and insinuating a small saucepan into the middle
of it, and encouraging the gleam with a pair of bellows. Meanwhile
Edwin uneasily ranged the room, and Darius sat motionless.

"Seen Gladstone's speech, I suppose?" Edwin said, daring a fearful
topic in the extraordinary circumstances.

Darius paid no heed. Edwin and Maggie exchanged a glance. Maggie made
the tea direct into a large cup, which she had previously warmed by
putting it upside down on the saucepan lid. When it was infused and
sweetened, she tasted it, as for a baby, and blew on it, and gave the
cup to her father, who, by degrees, emptied it, though not exclusively
into his mouth.

"Will you eat something now?" she suggested.

He would not.

"Very well, then, Edwin will help you upstairs."

From her manner Darius might have been a helpless and half-daft invalid
for years.

The ascent to bed was processional; Maggie hovered behind. But at the
dining-room door Darius, giving no explanation, insisted on turning
back: apparently he tried to speak but could not. He had forgotten his
"Signal." Snatching at it, he held it like a treasure. All three of
them went into the father's bedroom. Maggie turned up the gas. Darius
sat on the bed, looking dully at the carpet.

"Better see him into bed," Maggie murmured quickly to Edwin, and Edwin
nodded--the nod of capability--as who should say, "Leave all that to
me!" But in fact he was exceedingly diffident about seeing his father
into bed.

Maggie departed.

"Now then," Edwin began the business. "Let's get that overcoat off,
eh?" To his surprise Darius was most pliant. When the great clumsy
figure, with its wet cheeks, stood in trousers, shirt, and socks, Edwin
said, "You're all right now, aren't you?" And the figure nodded.

"Well, good-night."

Edwin came out on to the landing, shut the door, and walked about a
little in his own room. Then he went back to his