ger-skin and straightened the bronzes of
Vinedresser and Lazy Lad standing on the high chimneypiece.

"My dear, it grows late," she said. "Let us settle this matter. If your
uncle and cousin are to come, I must send a note over to Newlands
to-morrow before breakfast. Remember I have no choice in the matter. I
leave it entirely to you. Tell me seriously what you wish."

Richard stretched himself, turning his head in the hollow of his hands,
and shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"That is exactly what I would thank you so heartily to tell me," he
answered. "Do I, or don't I seriously wish it? I give you my word,
mother, I don't know."

"Oh; but, my dearest, that is folly! You must have inclination enough,
one way or the other, to come to a decision. I was careful not to
commit myself. It is still easy not to ask them without being guilty of
any discourtesy."

"It isn't that," Richard said. "It is simply that being anything but
heroic I am trying of two evils to choose the least. I should like to
have my uncle--and Helen here immensely. But if the visit wasn't a
success I should be proportionately disappointed and vexed. So is it
worth the risk? Disappointments are sufficiently abundant anyhow. Isn't
it slightly imbecile to run a wholly gratuitous risk of adding to their
number?"

Then the fixed idea began stealthily, yet surely, to reassert its
dominion; for there was a perceptible flavour of discouragement in the
young man's speech.

"Dickie, there is nothing wrong, is there,--nothing the matter,
to-night?"

"Oh, dear no, of course not!" he answered, half closing his eyes.
"Nothing in the world's the matter."

He unclasped his hands, leaned forward and patted the bulldog lying
across the rug at his feet. "At least nothing more than usual, nothing
more than the abiding something which always has been and always will
be the matter."

"Ah, my dear!" Katherine cried softly.

"I've just been reading Burton's Anatomy here," he went on bending
down, so that his face was hidden, while he pulled the dog's soft ears.
"He assures all--whom it may concern--that 'bodily imperfections do not
a whit blemish the soul or hinder the operations of it, but rather help
and much increase it.' There, Camp, poor old man, don't start--it's
nothing worse than me. I wonder if the elaborate pains which have been
taken through generations of your ancestors to breed you into your
existing and very royal hideousness--your flattened nose