house and--er--and--sit
there--and so on--he would not think of going to such a place. It is
one thing when you are out in the country for a day's fishing or
something, to have a glass of ale and a piece of bread and cheese at
an inn, but the other is quite different; he wouldn't do that--oh, no.
To sit in a little bar and--"

"Booze," Julia concluded for him. "Johnny, you are always a wonder to
me; how you have contrived to live so long and yet to keep your belief
in man unspotted from the world beats me."

Johnny looked uncomfortable and a little puzzled. "Well, but your
father--" he began.

"My father is a man," Julia interrupted, "and I would not undertake to
say a man would not do anything--on occasions--or a woman either, for
the matter of that. There is a beast in most men, and an archangel in
lots, and a snob, and a prig, and a dormant hero, and an embryo poet.
There are great possibilities in men; you have to watch and see which
is coming out top and back that, and then half the time you are wrong.
Of course, at father's age, possibilities are getting over; one or two
things have come top and stay there."

Mr. Gillat opened the cottage door and, not answering these
distressing generalities, fell back on his one fact. "Look," he said,
pointing to an empty peg, "he must have gone after fir-cones; you see
the basket has gone; he took it with him; I am sure he would not have
taken it to the 'Dog.'"

"I believe their whisky is very bad," Julia said, and seemed to think
more of that than the argument of the basket. "I'll give him another
hour before I set out to look for him."

She gave him the hour and then, in spite of Mr. Gillat's entreaties to
be allowed to go in her place, set out for Halgrave. But she did not
have to go all the way, for she met her father coming back. And she
early discovered that, if he had not been to the "Dog and Pheasant,"
he had been somewhere else where he could get whisky. They walked home
together, and she made neither comments nor inquiries; she did not
consider that evening a suitable time. The Captain was only a little
muddled and, as has been before said, a very little alcohol was
sufficient to do that; he was quite clear enough to be a good deal
relieved by his daughter's behaviour, and even thought that she
noticed nothing amiss. Indeed, by the morning, he had himself almost
come to think there was nothing to notice.

But alas, for the Captain! He had never learnt to bew