tairs to fetch them. Eddy Heron watched her softly
retreating figure, and smiled and spoke.

"I say, Gee-Gee's going strong, isn't she?"

Everybody affected not to hear him, and the youth went on smiling to his
unappreciated self.

Gertrude appeared again presently, bringing the children. On the very
threshold little Hugh struggled in her arms and tried to hurl himself on
his mother. His object attained, he turned his back on everybody and
hung his head over Jane's shoulder.

But little John Henry was admirably behaved. He wandered from guest to
guest, shaking hands, in his solemn urbanity, with each. He looked
already absurdly unastonished and important. He was not so much his
father's son as the son of all the Brodricks. As for little Hugh, it was
easy enough, Prothero said, to see whose son _he_ was. And Winny Heron
cried out in an ecstasy that he was going to be a genius, she was sure
of it.

"Heaven forbid," said Brodrick. Everybody heard him.

"Oh, Uncle Hughy, if he was like Jin-Jin!" Allurement and tender
reproach mingled in Winny's tone.

She turned to Jane with eyes that adored and loved and defended her. "I
wish you'd have dozens of babies--darlings--like yourself."

"And I wish," said Eddy, "she'd have dozens of books like her last one."

Eddy was standing, very straight and tall, on his uncle's hearth. His
chin, which was nothing if not determined, was thrust upwards and
outwards over his irreproachable high collar. Everybody looked at Eddy
as he spoke.

"What I want to know is why she doesn't have them? What have you all
been doing to her? What have _you_ been doing to her, Uncle Hughy?"

He looked round on all of them with the challenge of his young eyes.

"It's all very well, you know, but I agree with Miss Bickersteth. If
you're a genius you've no business to marry--I mean nobody's any
business to marry you."

"Mine," said Caro suavely, "was a purely abstract proposition."

But the terrible youth went on. "Mine isn't. Uncle Hugh's done a good
thing for himself, I know. But it would have been a jolly sight better
thing for literature if he'd married Gee-Gee, or somebody like that."

For there was nothing that young Eddy did not permit himself to say.

Little Hugh had begun to cry bitterly, as if he had understood that
there had been some reflection on his mother. And from crying he went on
to screaming, and Gertrude carried him, struggling violently, from the
room.

The screams conti