that I was standing in
front of him, but if he was going to say things about me I decided to
stay and hear them. "I find him the most pleasant companion, he has
the gift of silence--Meredith wrote--'Who cannot talk!--but who
can?'--he is also amusing, always unconsciously. I have great hopes
that he may become a man who will not waste his youth in vain struggles
with a ball. Had I the power I would banish all balls from England for
one short year, the experiment would be entertaining."

"It would result in a national dyspepsia," my mother said, laughing.

"Godfrey would play catch with an orange," Nina remarked.

The Warden looked up and saw me. "An orange bursts," he said. "I must
return to my hotel. Would you find me a conveyance, one with a
coachman as unlike a furious driver as possible?" he asked, and as Nina
came with me he was left alone with my mother. I don't know what he
said during those few minutes, but when we got back I found my mother
smiling placidly, though when I had gone away I was certain that she
disapproved of the Warden most thoroughly.

"The Warden wishes you to dine with him to-night," she said to me, and
without waiting for me to reply she went on to say how sorry my father
would be to miss him. The Warden began to express regrets at my
father's absence, but forgot what he was talking about in the middle of
his sentence, and finished up by telling the driver to go very slowly.
As he stepped into the vehicle I had found for him, he expressed a
fervent hope that it was more robust than it appeared to be.

"What a funny old man!" Nina exclaimed as soon as he had gone, "and
what nonsense he talks. He is a dear, but he does look odd!"

"He looks like a gentleman, and is one," my mother replied.

"You didn't like him at first," I said to her.

"I thought he spoke slightingly of your uncle and that he meant all he
said, which of course was stupid of me. He was delightful after you
had gone, and talked most kindly and sensibly about you, I wish your
father could have heard him."

But my father had gone to Rouen and was not coming back until ten
o'clock, and I am not sure that he would have liked the Warden, so
perhaps it was as well that they did not meet.

My dinner was wearisome, for Miss Davenport, the Warden's sister, was
with him, and she talked while I listened. I am sorry to say she was
in a very bad temper, and it seemed that the naughty Warden had kept
her waiting for tw