a row of hideous
walnut-wood chairs with their legs in the fender, he proceeded to tinge
the fine linen sheets a deep brown.

'They are warmed through,' he said grimly, when the smell of scorched
linen became intrusive.

Peter made tea in the drawing-room and spilt a good deal of boiling
water on the steel fender, and then he drew the green rep curtains
across the cold windows, and made up a roaring fire, and pulled a
screen round the sofa. He fetched his friend's forgotten medicine from
his bedroom and administered it, and told him with a lame attempt at
jocosity that he should have a penny if he took it like a lamb! Peter
was full of small jokes this afternoon, and full, too, of a certain
restlessness which had not expended itself when he had warmed sheets
and made up fires and brewed tea to the destruction of the Hulworth
steel fenders. He talked cheerfully on a dozen topics of conversation
current in the neighbourhood, and on Toffy's invitation he sent a
servant over to Bowshott to give notice that he would stay the night,
and to bring back his things.

'I have been doing up my accounts,' said Toffy, 'and I believe the
saddest book I ever read is my bank-book! A man has been down from the
British Museum to look at those vases in the hall, and he says that one
of them alone is worth four thousands pounds!--four thousand pounds,
Peter! for a vase that's eating its head off in a glass case, and might
be broken any day by a housemaid, while I perish with hunger!'

'If it's money,' began Peter easily, 'you 're an idiot if you don't let
me know what you want.'

And then the whole realization of his uncertain position smote him
sharply and cruelly for a moment as he remembered that he did not know
how he stood with the world as regards money, and that probably he was
not in the position to lend a five-pound note to any one. He had
accumulated through sheer laziness a certain number of large debts, the
payment of which had never troubled himself or his creditors, who were
only too glad to keep his name on their books; but now it seemed that
if he were to have merely a younger son's portion he might even find
himself in debt to his brother's estate. He had gone thoroughly with
the lawyer into the will of his father, and found that everything which
it was possible to tie up on the elder son had been willed to him. His
own share of the patrimony if his brother were still alive would be but
a small one.

He got