o ten, with a book-marker in it to keep the place. Once Chatty
had been known to take it up clandestinely after prayers, to see whether
the true murderer was found out; but Minnie waited quite decorously
till eight o'clock next evening, which was the right hour for resuming
the reading. Happy girls! They thus had in their limited little world
quite a happy life, expecting nothing, growing no older from year
to year. Minnie was twenty-five, Chatty twenty-three: they were
good-looking enough in their quiet way, very neat and tidy, with brown
hair so well brushed that it reflected the light. Theodore was the
youngest, and he had been very welcome when he came; for otherwise the
property would have gone to a distant heir of entail, which would not
have been pleasant for any of the family. He had been a very quiet boy
so long as he was at home, though not perhaps in the same manner of
quietness as that of the girls; but since he was thirteen he had been
away for the greater part of the years, appearing only in the holidays,
when he was always reading for something or other,--so that nobody was
aware how great was the difference between the fastidious young scholar
and the rest of his belongings.

Mr. Warrender himself was not a scholar. He had got through life
very well without ever being at the university. In his day it was not
considered such a necessity as now. And he was not at all critical of
his son. So long as the boy got into no scrapes he asked no more of him.
He was quite complacent when Theo brought home his school prizes, and
used to point them out to visitors. "This is for his Latin verses," he
would say. "I don't know where the boy got a turn for poetry. I am sure
it was not from me." The beautiful smooth binding and the school arms
on the side gave him great gratification. He had a faint notion that as
Theo brought home no prizes from Oxford he was not perhaps getting on so
well; but naturally he knew nothing of his son's experiences with the
Rector and the dons. And by that time he was ill and feverish, and far
more taken up about his beef-tea than about anything else in the world.
They did not make it half strong enough. If they only would make it
strong he felt sure he would soon regain his strength. But how could a
man pick up, who was allowed nothing but slops, when his beef-tea was
like water? This was the matter that occupied him most, while his son
was going through the ordeal above described,--there ne