t get on the job again, sometimes? You get
struck. See what I mean?"

"Perhaps I shall, if you explain it more clearly," said his wife, with
civility and forbearance, both of the controversial variety.

"I mean that if I had told Adrian then and there that he was an
unreasonable chap to expect anyone to believe that his eyesight came
back with a jump, of itself--because that was the tale they told, you
know----"

"That was the tale."

"Then very likely he would have told me the whole story. But I was
rather an ass, and let the thing slip at the time--and then I couldn't
pick it up again. Never got a chance!"

"Precisely. Just like a man! Men are so absurdly secretive with one
another. They won't this and they won't that, until one is surprised at
nothing. I quite see that you couldn't rake it up now, seventeen years
afterwards."

"Seventeen years! Come--I say!"

"Cecily is sixteen in August."

"Well--yes--well!--I suppose she is. I say, Con, that's a queer thing to
think of!"

"What is?"

"That we should have a girl of sixteen!"

"What can you expect?"

"Oh--it's all right, you know, as far as that goes. But she'll be a
grown-up young woman before we know it."

"Well?"

"What the dooce shall we do with her, then?"

"All parents," said the lady, somewhat didactically, "are similarly
situated, and have identical responsibilities."

"Yes--but it's gettin' serious. I want her to stop a little girl."

"Fathers do. But we need not begin to fuss about her yet, thank Heaven!"

"'Spose not. I say, I wonder what's become of those two young monkeys?"

"Now, you needn't begin to fidget about _them_. They can't fall into the
canal."

"They might lose sight of each other, and go huntin' about."

"Well--suppose they do! It won't hurt you. But _they_ won't lose sight
of one another."

"How do you know that?"

"Dave is not a boy now. He is a responsible man of five-and-twenty. I
told him not to let her go out of his sight."

"Oh well--I suppose it's all right. You're responsible, you know. _You_
manage these things."

"My dear!--how can you be so ridiculous? See how young she is. Besides,
he's known her from childhood."

The story does not take upon itself to interpret any portion whatever of
this conversation. It merely records it.

The last speech has to continue on reminiscent lines, apparently
suggested by the reference to the childhood of the speaker's daughter;
one of the young monkeys, no dou