rch of an apron shoulder string,
and permanently occupied in frantically pursuing loud cracks, like
pistol shots, of "Kate!--Kate!--Kate!" Each Miss Fargus "did" something
in the house. One "did" the lamps, another "did" the silver, another
"did" the fowls. And whatever it was they "did" they were always doing
it. Each Miss Fargus, in addition, "did" her own room, and unitedly they
all "did" the garden. Every doing was done by the clock; and at any hour
of the day any one Miss Fargus could tell a visitor precisely what, and
at what point of what, every other Miss Fargus was doing.

In this well-ordered scheme of things what Mr. Fargus principally "did"
was to keep out of the way of his wife and daughters, and this duty took
him all his time and ingenuity. From the back windows of Sabre's house
the grey little figure was frequently to be seen fleeting up and down
the garden paths in wary evasion of daughters "doing" the garden, and
there was every reason to suppose that, within the house, the grey
figure similarly fleeted up and down the stairs and passages. "Where
_is_ Papa?" was a constant cry from mouth to mouth of the female
Farguses; and fatigue parties were constantly being detached from their
duties to skirmish in pursuit of him.

In his leisure from these flights Mr. Fargus was intensely absorbed in
chess, in the game of Patience, and in the solution of acrostics. Sabre
was also fond of chess and attracted by acrostics; and regular evenings
of every week were spent by the two in unriddling the problems set in
the chess and acrostic columns of journals taken in for the purpose.
They would sit for hours solemnly staring at one another, puffing at
pipes, in quest of a hidden word beginning with one letter and ending
with another, or in search of the two master moves that alone would
produce Mate. (It was a point of honour not to work out chess problems
on a board but to do them in your head.) Likewise for hours the two in
games of chess and in competitive Patience, one against the other, to
see who would come out first. And to all these mental exercises--chess,
acrostics and Patience--an added interest was given by Mr. Fargus's
presentation of them as illustrative of his theory of life.

Mr. Fargus's theory of life was that everybody was placed in life to
fulfil a divine purpose and invested with the power to fulfil it. "No,
no, it's not fatalism," Mr. Fargus used to say. "Not predestination.
It's just exactly lik