ts chief
actor, and to her old friend who is now dining at the Hurkaru Club.

* * * * *

The third movement of Op. 999 was not a very long one, and, coming
to an end at this point, seemed to supply a reason for silence that
was not unwelcome in the back drawing-room. The end of a trying
conversation had been attained. Both speakers could now affect
attention to what was going on in the front. This had taken the form
of a discussion between Mr. Julius Bradshaw and Miss Laetitia Wilson,
who was anxious to transfer her position of first violin to that young
gentleman. We regret to have to report that Miss Sally's agreement
with her friend about the desirability had been _sotto voce_'d in
these terms: "Yes, Tishy dear! Do make the shop-boy play the last
movement." And Miss Wilson had then suggested it, saying there was
a bit she knew she couldn't play. "And you expect _me_ to!" said the
owner of the Strad, "when I haven't so much as looked at it for three
years past." To which Miss Sally appended a marginal note, "Stuff
and nonsense! Don't be affected, Mr. Bradshaw." However, after
compliments, and more protestations from its owner, the Strad was
brought into hotchpot, and Laetitia abdicated.

"Won't you come and sit in here, to be away from the music?" said the
back-drawing-room. But Laetitia wanted to see Mr. Bradshaw's fingering
of that passage. We are more interested in the back drawing-room.

Like many other athletic men--and we have seen how strongly this
character was maintained in Fenwick--he hated armchairs. Even in the
uncomfortable ones--by which we mean the ones _we_ dislike--his
restless strength would not remain quiet for any length of time. At
intervals he would get up and walk about the room, exasperating the
sedate, and then making good-humoured concession to their weakness.
Mrs. Nightingale could remember all this in Gerry the boy, twenty
years ago.

If it had not been for that music, probably he would have walked about
the room over that stiff problem in dates he had just grappled with.
As it was, he remained in his chair to solve it--that is, if he did
solve it. Possibly, the moment he saw something important turned on
the date of Sally's birth, he jumped across the solution to the
conclusion it was to lead to. Given the conclusion, the calculation
had no interest for him.

But the story his mind constructed to fit that conclusion stunned him.
It knitted his brows a