, dines the local cricket team once a
year, keeps the church going, knows all the poor people, and all the
rich in the neighbourhood, and has only one fad."

"What is that?"

"She always wears her hair powdered. Come down and stay with her, and
she will teach you to be young."

"Well--but I am afraid she will work me very hard."

"Not she. You would like a new experience."

Claude yawned, and blinked his long dark eyes in a carefully Eastern
manner.

"I am afraid there is no such thing left for me," he said with an
elaborate dreariness. "Still, if your aunt will invite me, I will come.
Of course you will accompany me, I must have a chaperon."

"Of course."

"Ah!" Claude said, as a footman came softly into the room, "here is our
absinthe. Now, Jimmy, please do forget your horrible football, and I
will teach you to be decadent."

"As my aunt will teach you to be young--you old boy."

II

"Mr Haddon has left, sir," said the footman, standing by Claude's
bedside in the detached manner of the well-bred domestic. "Here is a
note for you, sir; I was to give it you the first thing."

And he handed it on a salver.

Claude stretched out his thin white arm and took it, without manifesting
any of the surprise that he felt. When the footman had gone, he poured
out a cup of tea from the silver teapot that stood on a small table at
his elbow, sipped it, and quietly opened the square envelope. The
Northamptonshire sun was pouring in with a countrified ardour through
the bedroom window. Outside the birds twittered in Miss Haddon's
cherished garden. For Claude had come down at that contented spinster's
invitation to spend a week with her, bringing Jimmy as chaperon, and
this was the very first morning of his visit. Now he learnt that his
chaperon had already "left," possibly to be a "half-back," or something
equally ridiculous, at a local football match in a neighbouring
village. Claude spread the note out and read it, while the birds chirped
to the very manifest spring.

"DEAR BOY,--Good-bye, and good luck to you. I know you are
never angry, so it is scarcely worth while to tell you not to
be. I am off. Back in a week. You will learn your lesson
better alone with Aunt Kitty. There is no absinthe in her
cellar, but she knows good champagne from bad. You will be all
right. Study hard.--Yours ever,

JIM."

Claude drank two cups of tea instead o