id Peter, "I see that you're familiar with the whole
disgraceful story. Yes, Marietta, the unspeakable old Tartar, was
all for stuffing him with rosemary and onions. But he could not bring
himself to share her point of view. He screamed his protest, like a man,
in twenty different octaves. You really should have heard him. His voice
is of a compass, of a timbre, of an expressiveness! Passive endurance, I
fear, is not his forte. For the sake of peace and silence, I intervened,
interceded. She had her knife at his very throat. I was not an instant
too soon. So, of course, I 've had to adopt him."

"Of course, poor man," sympathised the Duchessa. "It's a recognised
principle that if you save a fellow's life, you 're bound to him for
the rest of yours. But--but won't you find him rather a burdensome
responsibility when he's grownup?" she reflected.

"--Que voulez-vous?" reflected Peter. "Burdensome responsibilities
are the appointed accompaniments of man's pilgrimage. Why not Francois
Villon, as well as another? And besides, as the world is at present
organised, a member of the class vulgarly styled 'the rich' can
generally manage to shift his responsibilities, when they become too
irksome, upon the backs of the poor. For example--Marietta! Marietta!"
he called, raising his voice a little, and clapping his hands.

Marietta came. When she had made her courtesy to the Duchessa, and
a polite enquiry as to her Excellency's health, Peter said, with
an indicative nod of the head, "Will you be so good as to remove my
responsibility?"

"Il porcellino?" questioned Marietta.

"Ang," said he.

And when Marietta had borne Francois, struggling and squealing in her
arms, from the foreground--

"There--you see how it is done," he remarked.

The Duchessa laughed.

"An object-lesson," she agreed. "An object-lesson in--might n't one call
it the science of Applied Cynicism?"

"Science!" Peter plaintively repudiated the word. "No, no. I was rather
flattering myself it was an art."

"Apropos of art--" said the Duchessa.

She came down two or three steps nearer to the brink of the river. She
produced from behind her back a hand that she had kept there, and held
up for Peter's inspection a grey-and-gold bound book.

"Apropos of art, I've been reading a novel. Do you know it?"

Peter glanced at the grey-and-gold binding--and dissembled the emotion
that suddenly swelled big in his heart.

He screwed his eyeglass into his eye, and