throw himself violently against
the back of his chair, while Mr. Pepper crinkled his cheeks as though
they had been cut in wood. The ghost of a roar of laughter came out to
them, and was drowned at once in the wind. In the dry yellow-lighted
room Mr. Pepper and Mr. Ambrose were oblivious of all tumult; they were
in Cambridge, and it was probably about the year 1875.

"They're old friends," said Helen, smiling at the sight. "Now, is there
a room for us to sit in?"

Rachel opened a door.

"It's more like a landing than a room," she said. Indeed it had nothing
of the shut stationary character of a room on shore. A table was rooted
in the middle, and seats were stuck to the sides. Happily the tropical
suns had bleached the tapestries to a faded blue-green colour, and the
mirror with its frame of shells, the work of the steward's love, when
the time hung heavy in the southern seas, was quaint rather than
ugly. Twisted shells with red lips like unicorn's horns ornamented
the mantelpiece, which was draped by a pall of purple plush from which
depended a certain number of balls. Two windows opened on to the deck,
and the light beating through them when the ship was roasted on the
Amazons had turned the prints on the opposite wall to a faint yellow
colour, so that "The Coliseum" was scarcely to be distinguished from
Queen Alexandra playing with her Spaniels. A pair of wicker arm-chairs
by the fireside invited one to warm one's hands at a grate full of gilt
shavings; a great lamp swung above the table--the kind of lamp which
makes the light of civilisation across dark fields to one walking in the
country.

"It's odd that every one should be an old friend of Mr. Pepper's,"
Rachel started nervously, for the situation was difficult, the room
cold, and Helen curiously silent.

"I suppose you take him for granted?" said her aunt.

"He's like this," said Rachel, lighting on a fossilised fish in a basin,
and displaying it.

"I expect you're too severe," Helen remarked.

Rachel immediately tried to qualify what she had said against her
belief.

"I don't really know him," she said, and took refuge in facts, believing
that elderly people really like them better than feelings. She produced
what she knew of William Pepper. She told Helen that he always called on
Sundays when they were at home; he knew about a great many things--about
mathematics, history, Greek, zoology, economics, and the Icelandic
Sagas. He had turned Persian po