ed breath: "But it's _awful_!" A moment after he was
laughing at himself, as he said to his companion, referring to a very
palpable fact, "I don't wonder I made you laugh just now."

They walked on without much said till they came to Iggulden's; when
the doctor, seeing no light in the sitting-room, hoped his worthy
mother had fulfilled a promise made when they came away, and gone to
bed. It was then past eleven. But he was reckoning without his host.

Fenwick said to him, as they stood on Iggulden's threshold and doormat
respectively--presuming rashly, on imperfect information, to delay
farewells--"Now look here, Conrad, my dear boy (I like your name
Conrad), don't you go and boil over to Sally to-morrow, nor next day.
You'll only spoil the rest of your stay, maybe.... What! well--what
I mean is that nothing I say prejudices the kitten. You'll understand
that, I'm sure?"

"Perfectly. Of course, if Sally were to say she knew somebody she
would like a deal better, there's no reason why she shouldn't....
I mean _I_ couldn't complain."

"Yes--yes! I see. You'd exonerate her. Good boy! Very proper." And
indeed the doctor had felt, as the words passed his lips, that he was
rather a horrid liar. But the point didn't matter. Fenwick laughed it
off: "Just you take my advice, and refer the matter to the kitten the
last day you're here. Monday, won't it be? And don't think about it!"

"Oh no! I'm a philosophical sort of chap, I am! Never in extremes.
Good-night!"

"I see. _Sperat infestis metuit secundis alteram sortem bene
praeparatum pectus_--Horace." Fenwick ran this through in a breath;
and the doctor, a little hazy in school-memories of the classics,
said, "What's that?" and began translating it--"The bosom well
prepared for either lot, fears...." Fenwick caught him up and
completed the sentence:

"Fears what is good, and hopes for what is not. Cut away to bed, old
chap, and sleep sound...." Then he paused a moment, as he saw the
doctor looking a question at him intently, and just about to speak
it. He answered it before it came:

"No, no! Nothing more. I mean to forget all about it, and take my life
as it stands. Bother Mr. Harrisson!" He dropped his voice to say this;
then raised it again. "Don't you fret about me, doctor. Remember, I'm
Algernon Fenwick! Good-night!"

"Good-night!" And then the doctor, with the remains of heart-turmoil
in him, and a brain reeling, more or less, went up into what he
conceived to