er not go," Nina said decidedly, "but do take Godfrey up
with you."

"I shan't leave you here by yourself," my mother answered.

"It's a pity Miss Read has gone," I put in, and Nina looked very
savagely across the table at me.

"You had better go up by yourself," my father said.

"Don't you want to see Fred playing in his first 'Varsity match--you
came up in December to see me play?" I asked Nina.

But she simply went on eating her fish as if I had not spoken, and I
wished again that Miss Read had not left us.

CHAPTER XVII

THE PROFESSOR AND HIS SON

There is not much room for a feud in a small family, and, thank
goodness, I did not belong to a large one. Collier had five brothers
and four sisters, some of whom were never on speaking terms with the
others except at Christmas or a birthday when, from habit, they
declared a truce. "The truce is no good," Collier said to me when he
told me about it, "because the only thing which happens is that they
change sides. I believe they pick up." "What happens to you?" I
asked. "Oh, I'm neutral, a sort of referee, and have a worse time than
anybody," he replied, and I was glad that fate had not decreed that I
should be born into the Collier family.

I am sure that had I been able to find any one else to talk to, I
should have left Nina alone after she had refused to go to the 'Varsity
match. It would have been a great effort, but I thought that Nina was
going out of her way to be particularly horrid, and she liked talking
as much as I did. Silence, an air of offended dignity, the sort of
not-angry-but-very-sorry business, would have been a heavy punishment
for her if I could only have inflicted it, but when my father and
mother were engaged there was often nobody, except Nina, to ask to do
anything. So after wasting one beautiful afternoon I decided that the
best thing I could do was to come to a plain understanding with her.

Fortified by my idea, but at the same time rather nervous, because I
knew that unless you are a master and the other person happens to be a
boy it is much easier to talk about a plain understanding than to
arrive at it, I strolled on to the lawn, and after taking a circuitous
route I sat down by Nina. I had got her at a disadvantage because she
was reading a book which my mother had said was good for her, and if I
sat there long enough and bounced a tennis-ball up and down in front of
me I knew she was bound to talk. For some reas