u would finance him? Is that the idea? Well, I suppose as I'm
your trustee, if the money was all lost, I should have to make it up,
so it wouldn't matter."

"Oh, Major dear! is _that_ what being a trustee means?"

"Of course, my dear Rosa! What did you think it meant?"

"Do you know, I don't know what I _did_ think; at least, I thought it
would be very nice if you were my trustee."

The conversation has gone off on a siding, but the Major shunts the
train back. "That was what you and little fiddle-stick's-end were
talking about till three in the morning, then?"

"Oh, Major dear, did you hear us? And we kept you awake? What a _shame_!"

* * * * *

For on the previous evening, Sally being out musicking and expected
home late, Fenwick and Mrs. Nightingale had gone out in the back-garden
to enjoy the sweet air of that rare phenomenon--a really fine spring
night in England--leaving the Major indoors because of his bronchial
tubes. The late seventies shrink from night air, even when one means to
be a healthy octogenarian. Also, they go away to bed, secretively, when
no one is looking--at least, the Major did in this case. Of course, he
was staying the night, as usual.

So, in the interim between the Major's good-night and Sally's
cab-wheels, this elderly couple of lovers (as they would have worded
their own description) had the summer night to themselves. As the Major
closed his bedroom window, he saw, before drawing down the blind, that
the two were walking slowly up and down the gravel path, talking
earnestly. No impression of mature years came to the Major from that
gravel path. A well-made, handsome man, with a bush of brown hair and
a Raleigh beard, and a graceful woman suggesting her beauty through the
clear moonlight--that was the implication of as much as he could see,
as he drew the inference a word of soliloquy hinted at, "Not Millais'
Huguenot, so far!" But he evidently expected that grouping very soon.
Only he was too sleepy to watch for it, and went to bed. Besides, would
it have been honourable?

"It's no use, Fenwick," she said to him in the garden, "trying to keep
off the forbidden subject, so I won't try."

"It's not forbidden by me. Nothing could be, that _you_ would like
to say."

Was that, she thought, only what so many men say every day to so many
women, and mean so little by? Or was it more? She could not be sure
yet. She glanced at him as they turned at the pa