iffs, giving them a golden head.

"If Marley's on Whitcombe beach, we'll row over to Boveyhayne," said
Ninian. "You'd like to get on to the sea, wouldn't you, Quinny?"

Henry nodded his head.

"No," said Gilbert, "we won't. We'll sit here for a while, and I'll read
my play to Quinny. I carry it about with me, Quinny, so that I can read
it to Ninian whenever his spirits are low!"

"I never saw such a chap!" Ninian mumbled.

"This great, hairy, beefy fellow," Gilbert went on, seizing hold of
Ninian's arm with his disengaged hand, "does not love literature!..."

Ninian broke free from Gilbert's grip. "Marley is on the beach," he
said, and ran ahead to engage the boat.

"Well, Quinny!" said Gilbert, when Ninian had gone.

"Well, Gilbert!" Henry replied.

"How's Ireland? Still making an ass of itself?"

Henry made no answer to Gilbert's question because he knew that an
answer was not expected. Had any one else spoken in that fashion to him,
any other Englishman, he would probably have angered instantly, but
Gilbert was different from all other people in Henry's eyes, and was
privileged to say whatever he pleased.

"Gilbert," he said, "I want to have a long jaw with you about
something!..."

The English way of speaking came naturally to him, and he said "a long
jaw about something" as easily as if he had never been outside an
English public school.

"What?" Gilbert said.

"Oh, everything. Ireland and things!"

"All right, my son!"

"You see!..."

"Wait though," said Gilbert, "until we catch up with Ninian. He ought to
hear it, too. He has a wise old noddle, Ninian, although he's such a fat
'un.... My God, Quinny, isn't he getting big? If he piles up any more
muscle, hell have to go to Trinity Hall and join the beefy brutes and
get drunk and all that kind of manly thing!" They came up with Ninian as
he spoke. "Won't you, Ninian?"

"Won't I what?" Ninian replied.

"Have to go to Trinity Hall if you go on being a beefy Briton. Hilloa,
Marley!"

"Good-evenin', sir!" said old Marley.

They got into the boat, and Ninian rowed them round the white cliff to
Boveyhayne beach, where they left the boat and walked up the village
street to the lane that led to Boveyhayne Manor.

"Henry wants to talk about the world, Ninian!" said Gilbert as they left
the beach. "We'd better have a good old gabble after dinner to-night,
hadn't we?"

"It doesn't matter what I say," said Ninian, "you'll gabble anyhow.
Anything