additional torment from the present; and one of the
things which made the present a source of misery to him was the fact
that he was expected to behave more like a mad millionaire than a sober
young man with a knowledge of the value of money. His mind, trained from
infancy to a decent respect for the pence, had not yet adjusted itself
to the possession of large means; and the open-handed role forced upon
him by the family appalled him.

When the Coppins wanted anything, they asked for it; and it seemed to
Roland that they wanted pretty nearly everything. If Mr. Coppin had
reached his present age without the assistance of a gold watch, he might
surely have struggled along to the end on gun-metal. In any case, a man
of his years should have been thinking of higher things than mere gauds
and trinkets. A like criticism applied to Mrs. Coppin's demand for a
silk petticoat, which struck Roland as simply indecent. Frank and Percy
took theirs mostly in specie. It was Muriel who struck the worst blow by
insisting on a hired motor-car.

Roland hated motor-cars, especially when they were driven by Albert
Potter, as this one was. Albert, that strong, silent man, had but one
way of expressing his emotions, namely to open the throttle and shave
the paint off trolley-cars. Disappointed love was giving Albert a good
deal of discomfort at this time, and he found it made him feel better
to go round corners on two wheels. As Muriel sat next to him on these
expeditions, Roland squashing into the tonneau with Frank and Percy, his
torments were subtle. He was not given a chance to forget, and the only
way in which he could obtain a momentary diminution of the agony was to
increase the speed to sixty miles an hour.

It was in this fashion that they journeyed to the neighboring town of
Lexingham to see M. Etienne Feriaud perform his feat of looping the loop
in his aeroplane.

It was Brother Frank's idea that they should make up a party to go and
see M. Feriaud. Frank's was one of those generous, unspoiled natures
which never grow _blase_ at the sight of a fellow human taking a
sporting chance at hara-kiri. He was a well-known figure at every wild
animal exhibition within a radius of fifty miles, and M. Feriaud drew
him like a magnet.

"The blighter goes up," he explained, as he conducted the party into the
arena, "and then he stands on his head and goes round in circles. I've
seen pictures of it."

It appeared that M. Feriaud did even