the Infirmary that if he hadn't
been so careful of me it would have been much worse."

"You refer, I suppose, to Gallup?"

"Yes, father, and it really was decent of him, because I went dressed
up as a suffragette and had no end of a rag; he might have been awfully
shirty, and he wasn't--he never told a soul. Don't you think we ought
to ask him?"

"Does your mother know about this?"

"Of course not, nobody knew except Uz and," Buz added truthfully,
"Adele."

"Leave me," said Mr Ffolliot feebly, "I've had about as much as I can
bear this afternoon--Go."

"You do see, sir, that it makes a difference," pleaded the persistent
Buz.

"Go," thundered the exasperated Squire.

"All right, father, I'm going, but you _do_ see, don't you?" said Buz
from the door.

CHAPTER XXI

A RETROSPECT AND A RESULT

Mr Ffolliot was really a much-tried man. Those interviews with Grantly
and Buz caused his nerves to vibrate most unpleasantly.

So unhinged was he that for quite half an hour after Buz's departure he
kept looking nervously at the door, fully expectant that it would open
to admit Uz, primed with some fresh reason why Eloquent Gallup should
be asked to dinner; and that he would be followed by Ger and the Kitten
bent on a similar errand.

However, no one else invaded his privacy. The Manor House was very
still; the only occasional sound being the soft swish of a curtain
stirred by the breeze through the open window.

Mr Ffolliot neither read _Gaston Latour_ nor did he write, though his
monograph on Ercole Ferrarese was not yet completed.

Wrapped in thought he sat quite motionless in his deep chair, and the
subject that engrossed him was his own youth; comparing what he
remembered of it with these queer, careless sons of his, who seemed
born to trouble other people, Mr Ffolliot could not call to mind any
occasion when he had been a nuisance to anybody. He honestly tried and
wholly failed.

Such persons as have been nourished in early youth on Mr Thackeray's
inimitable _The Rose and The Ring_ will remember how at the christening
of Prince Giglio, the Fairy Blackstick, who was his godmother, said,
"My poor child, the best thing I can send you is a little misfortune!"

Now the Fairy Blackstick had evidently absented herself from Hilary
Ffolliot's christening, for his youth was one long procession of
brilliant successes. It is true that his father, an easy-going,
amiable clergyman, died during his first te