atching rheumatism himself, but he risked the life of
that boy by encouraging him to do such a foolish action. It was a
hair-brained business altogether, sir; and I am glad you had the wisdom,
Fred, to keep out of it. The idea of two lives being risked to save that
of a wretched cur is too absurd; if you had offered the girl who owned
it five shillings to buy another it would have been more sensible."

"I don't believe you mean what you say a bit, Uncle Harry," Alice
exclaimed indignantly. "I believe if you had been there, and had heard
that poor little dog's cries as we did, you would have gone in yourself.
I am sure I would if I had been a man."

"I always observe, my dear," Captain Bayley said sarcastically, "that
women would do wonderful things if they had only been born men. Nature
appears to be always making mistakes by putting the dauntless and heroic
spirits into female bodies, and _vice versa_."

"I don't like you when you talk like that, Uncle Harry--that is, I
shouldn't like you if I thought you meant it; but you only talk so out
of contradiction. If I had said I thought Frank was very foolish for
having gone into the water, you would have taken the opposite side
directly."

"You are an impudent puss, Miss Alice," her uncle retorted, "and I shall
have to tell Miss Lancaster that unless she can keep you in better order
I shall have to send you to school. You appear to have been born without
the bump of veneration."

"I would venerate you ever so much, Uncle Harry," the girl replied,
laughing, "if you would always be good and reasonable; but I cannot
venerate you when you are contrary and disagreeable, and say things you
don't mean."

As Fred Barkley walked home, he wondered again and again to himself
whether Captain Bayley had meant what he said, and whether this act of
Frank's would raise him in his opinion or the contrary; but he flattered
himself that, at any rate, no harm had been done, for his own advocacy
of his cousin could not but have placed him in the most favourable
light.

Fred Barkley was shrewd, but his power of reading character was, as yet,
by no means perfect, and his uncle's changing moods baffled the power of
analysis. He would not have been pleased had he known that at that very
moment the old officer was walking up and down his library, muttering to
himself, "I would give a good deal if there were a glass window at that
boy Fred's heart, that I could see what it is really made of.