, and what with its management,
and with horses and hunting and shooting, you would be just in your
element."

"Well, we will see about it when the time comes. I am sure I hope the
old lady will be with us for a long time yet. She is as kind-hearted a
soul as ever lived, though it would have been better for me, no doubt,
if she held the reins a little tighter. Well, anyhow, Frank, I will cut
the billiards altogether."

They exchanged a silent grip of the hand on the promise, and Julian,
looking more serious than usual, put on his hat and went out. There was
a curious reversal of the usual relations between the brothers. Julian,
although he always laughed at his young brother's assumption of the part
of mentor, really leant upon his stronger will, and as often as not,
even if unconsciously, yielded to his influence, while Frank's
admiration for his brother was heightened by the unfailing good temper
with which the latter received his remonstrances and advice. "He is an
awfully good fellow," he said to himself when Julian left the room.
"Anyone else would have got into a rage at my interference; but he has
only one fault; he can't say no, and that is at the root of everything.
I can't understand myself why a fellow finds it more difficult to say no
than to say yes. If it is right to do a thing one does it, if it is not
right one leaves it alone, and the worst one has to stand, if you don't
do what other fellows want, is a certain amount of chaff, and that hurts
no one."

Frank, indeed, was just as good tempered as Julian, although in an
entirely different way. He had never been known to be in a passion, but
put remonstrance and chaff aside quietly, and went his own way without
being in the slightest degree affected by them.

Julian kept his promise, and was seen no more in the billiard saloon.
Fortunately for him the young fellows with whom he was in the habit of
playing were all townsmen, clerks, the sons of the richer tradesmen, or
of men who owned fishing-boats or trading vessels, and others of that
class--not, indeed, as Frank had said, the sort of men whom Colonel
Wyatt would have cared for his son to have associated with--but harmless
young fellows who frequented the billiard-rooms as a source of amusement
and not of profit, and who therefore had no motive for urging Julian to
play. To Mrs. Troutbeck's delight he now spent four or five evenings at
home, only going out for an hour to smoke a pipe and to have a ch