Джеймс Мэтью Барри
When a Man's Single: A Tale of Literary Life

CHAPTER XV
COLONEL ABINGER TAKES COMMAND

One misty morning, about three weeks after the picnic, Dick found himself a prisoner in the quadrangle of Frobisher's Inn. He had risen to catch an early train, but the gates were locked, and the porter in charge had vanished from his box. Dick chafed, and tore round the Inn in search of him. It was barely six o'clock; which is three hours after midnight in London. The windows of the Inn had darkened one by one, until for hours the black building had slept heavily with only one eye open. Dick recognised the window, and saw Rob's shadow cast on its white blind. He was standing there, looking up a little uneasily, when the porter tramped into sight.

'Is Mr. Angus often as late as this?' Mary's brother paused to ask at the gate.

'Why, sir,' the porter answered, 'I am on duty until eight o'clock, and as likely as not he will still be sitting there when I go. His shadow up there has become a sort of companion to me in the long nights, but I sometimes wonder what has come over the gentleman of late.'

'He is busy, I suppose; that is all,' Dick said sharply.

The porter shook his head doubtfully, like one who knew the ways of literary hands. He probably wrote himself.

'Mr. Angus only came in from his office at three o'clock,' he said, 'and you would think he would have had enough of writing by that time. You can see his arm going on the blind though yet, and it won't be out of his common if he has another long walk before he goes to bed.'

'Does he walk so late as this?' asked Dick, to whom six in the morning was an hour of the night.

'I never knew such a gentleman for walking,' replied the porter, 'and when I open the gate to him he is off at six miles an hour. I can hear the echo of his feet two or three streets off. He doesn't look as if he did it for pleasure either.'

'What else would he do it for?'

'I can't say. He looks as if he wanted to run away from himself.'

Dick passed out, with a forced laugh. He knew that since saying good-bye to Mary at Sunbury Station, Rob had hardly dared to stop working and face the future. The only rest Rob got was when he was striding along the great thoroughfares, where every one's life seemed to have a purpose except his own. But it was only when he asked himself for what end he worked that he stopped working. There were moments when he could not believe that it was all over. He saw himself dead, and the world going on as usual. When he read what he had written the night before, he wondered how people could be interested in such matters. The editor of the Wire began to think of this stolid Scotsman every time there was a hitch in the office, but Rob scarcely noticed that he was making progress. It could only mean ten or twenty pounds more a month; and what was that to a man who had only himself to think of, and had gathered a library on twenty shillings a week? He bought some good cigars, however.

Dick, who was longing for his father's return from the Continent, so that the responsibility for this miserable business might be transferred to the colonel's shoulders, frequently went into Rob's rooms to comfort him, but did not know how to do it. They sat silently on opposite sides of the very hearthrug which Mary had once made a remark about – Rob had looked interestedly at the rug after she went away – and each thought that, but for the other's sake, he would rather be alone.

What Dick felt most keenly was Rob's increased regard for him. Rob never spoke of the Tawny Owl without an effort, but he showed that he appreciated Dick's unspoken sympathy. If affairs could have righted themselves in that way, Mary's brother would have preferred to be turned with contumely out of Rob's rooms, where, as it was, and despite his friendship for Rob, he seemed now to be only present on false pretences. Dick was formally engaged to Nell now, but he tried at times to have no patience with Rob. Perhaps he thought a little sadly in his own rooms that to be engaged is not all the world.

Dick had hoped that the misunderstanding which parted Rob and Mary at Sunbury would keep them apart without further intervention from him. That was not to be. The next time he went to Molesey he was asked why he had not brought Mr. Angus with him, and though it was not Mary who asked the question, she stopped short on her way out of the saloon to hear his answer.

'He did not seem to want to come,' Dick replied reluctantly.

'I know why Mr. Angus would not come with you,' Nell said to Dick when they were alone; 'he thinks Mary is engaged to Sir Clement.'

'Nonsense,' said Dick.

'I am sure of it,' said Nell; 'you know we all thought so that day we were up the river.'

'Then let him think so if he chooses,' Dick said harshly. 'It is no affair of his.'

'Oh, it is!' Nell exclaimed. 'But I suppose it would never do, Dick?'

'What you are thinking of is quite out of the question,' replied Dick, feeling that it was a cruel fate which compelled him to act a father's part to Mary; 'and besides, Mary does not care for him like that. She told me so herself.'

'Oh, but she does,' Nell replied, in a tone of conviction.

'Did she tell you so?'

'No, she said she didn't,' answered Nell, as if that made no difference.

'Well,' said Dick wearily, 'it is much better that Angus should not come here again.'

Nevertheless, when Dick returned to London he carried in his pocket an invitation to Rob to spend the following Saturday at the Tawny Owl. It was a very nice note in Mary Abinger's handwriting, and Dick would have liked to drop it over the Hungerfield Bridge. He gave it to Rob, however, and stood on the defensive.

The note began, 'Dear Mr. Angus, Mrs. Meredith would be very pleased if you could – '

The blood came to Rob's face as he saw the handwriting, but it went as quickly.

'They ask me down next Saturday,' Rob said bluntly to Dick, 'but you know why I can't go.'

'You had better come,' miserable Dick said, defying himself.

'She is to marry Dowton, is she not?' Rob asked, but with no life in his voice.

Dick turned away his head, to leave the rest to fate.

'So, of course I must not go,' Rob continued bravely.

Dick did not dare to look him in the face, but Rob put his hand on the shoulder of Mary's brother.

'I was a madman,' he said, 'to think that she could ever have cared for me, but this will not interfere with our friendship, Abinger?'

'Surely not,' said Dick, taking Rob's hand.

It was one of those awful moments in men's lives when they allow, face to face, that they like each other.

Rob concluded that Mrs. Meredith, knowing nothing of his attachment for Mary, saw no reason why he should not return to the house-boat, and that circumstances had compelled Mary to write the invitation. His blundering honesty would not let him concoct a polite excuse for declining it, and Mrs. Meredith took his answer amiss, while Nell dared not say what she thought for fear of Dick. Mary read his note over once, and then went for a solitary walk round the island. Rob saw her from the tow-path where he had been prowling about for hours in hopes of catching a last glimpse of her. Her face was shaded beneath her big straw hat, and no baby-yacht, such as the Thames sports, ever glided down the river more prettily than she tripped along the island path. Once her white frock caught in a dilapidated seat, and she had to stoop to loosen it. Rob's heart stopped beating for a moment just then. The way Mary extricated herself was another revelation. He remembered having thought it delightful that she seldom knew what day of the month it was, and having looked on in an ecstasy while she searched for the pocket of her dress. The day before Mrs. Meredith had not been able to find her pocket, and Rob had thought it foolish of ladies not to wear their pockets where they could be more easily got at.

Rob did not know it, but Mary saw him. She had but to beckon, and in three minutes he would have been across the ferry. She gave no sign, however, but sat dreamily on the ramshackle seat that patient anglers have used until the Thames fishes must think seat and angler part of the same vegetable. Though Mary would not for worlds have let him know that she saw him, she did not mind his standing afar off and looking at her. Once after that Rob started involuntarily for Molesey, but realising what he was about by the time he reached Surbiton, he got out of the train there and returned to London.

An uneasy feeling possessed Dick that Mary knew of the misunderstanding which kept Rob away, and possibly even of her brother's share in fostering it. If so, she was too proud to end it. He found that if he mentioned Rob to her she did not answer a word. Nell's verbal experiments in the same direction met with a similar fate, and every one was glad when the colonel reappeared to take command.

Colonel Abinger was only in London for a few days, being on his way to Glen Quharity, the tenant of which was already telegraphing him glorious figures about the grouse. Mary was going too, and the Merediths were shortly to return to Silchester.

'There is a Thrums man on this stair,' Dick said to his father one afternoon in Frobisher's Inn, 'a particular friend of mine, though I have treated him villainously.'

'Ah,' said the colonel, who had just come up from the house-boat, 'then you might have him in, and make your difference up. Perhaps he could give me some information about the shooting.'

'Possibly,' Dick said; 'but we have no difference to make up, because he thinks me as honest as himself. You have met him, I believe.'

'What did you say his name was?'

'His name is Angus.'

'I can't recall any Angus.'

'Ah, you never knew him so well as Mary and I do.'

'Mary?' asked the colonel, looking up quickly.

'Yes,' said Dick. 'Do you remember a man from a Silchester paper who was at the castle last Christmas?'

'What!' cried the colonel, 'an underbred, poaching fellow who – '

'Not at all,' said Dick, 'an excellent gentleman, who is to make his mark here, and, as I have said, my very particular friend.'

'That fellow turned up again,' groaned the colonel.

'I have something more to tell you of him,' continued Dick remorselessly. 'I have reason to believe, as we say on the Press when hard up for copy, that he is in love with Mary.'

The colonel sprang from his seat. 'Be calm,' said Dick.

'I am calm,' cried the colonel, not saying another word, so fearful was he of what Dick might tell him next.

'That would not, perhaps, so much matter,' Dick said, coming to rest at the back of a chair, 'if it were not that Mary seems to have an equal regard for him.'

Colonel Abinger's hands clutched the edge of the table, and it was not a look of love he cast at Dick.

'If this be true,' he exclaimed, his voice breaking in agitation, 'I shall never forgive you, Richard, never. But I don't believe it.'

Dick felt sorry for his father.

'It is a fact that has to be faced,' he said, more gently.

'Why, why, why, the man is a pauper!'

'Not a bit of it,' said Dick. 'He may be on the regular staff of the Wire any day now.'

'You dare to look me in the face, and tell me you have encouraged this, this – ' cried the colonel, choking in a rush of words.

'Quite the contrary,' Dick said; 'I have done more than I had any right to do to put an end to it.'

'Then it is ended?'

'I can't say.'

'It shall be ended,' shouted the colonel, making the table groan under his fist.

'In a manner,' Dick said, 'you are responsible for the whole affair. Do you remember when you were at Glen Quharity two or three years ago asking a parson called Rorrison, father of Rorrison the war correspondent, to use his son's Press influence on behalf of a Thrums man? Well, Angus is that man. Is it not strange how this has come about?'

'It is enough to make me hate myself,' replied the irate colonel, though it had not quite such an effect as that.

When his father had subsided a little, Dick told him of what had been happening in England during the last month or two. There had been a change of Government, but the chief event was the audacity of a plebeian in casting his eyes on a patrician's daughter. What are politics when the pipes in the bath-room burst?

'So you see,' Dick said in conclusion, 'I have acted the part of the unrelenting parent fairly well, and I don't like it.'

'Had I been in your place,' replied the colonel, 'I would have acted it a good deal better.'

'You would have told Angus that you considered him, upon the whole, the meanest thing that crawls, and that if he came within a radius of five miles of your daughter you would have the law of him? Yes; but that sort of trespassing is not actionable nowadays; and besides, I don't know what Mary might have said.'

'Trespassing!' echoed the colonel; 'I could have had the law of him for trespassing nearly a year ago.'

'You mean that time you caught him fishing in the Dome? I only heard of that at second-hand, but I have at least no doubt that he fished to some effect.'

'He can fish,' admitted the colonel; 'I should like to know what flies he used.'

Dick laughed.

'Angus,' he said, 'is a man with a natural aptitude for things. He does not, I suspect, even make love like a beginner.'

'You are on his side, Richard.'

'It has not seemed like it so far, but, I confess, I have certainly had enough of shuffling.'

'There will be no more shuffling,' said the colonel fiercely. 'I shall see this man and tell him what I think of him. As for Mary – '

He paused.

'Yes,' said Dick, 'Mary is the difficulty. At present I cannot even tell you what she is thinking of it all. Mary is the one person I could never look in the face when I meditated an underhand action – I remember how that sense of honour of hers used to annoy me when I was a boy – and so I have not studied her countenance much of late.'

'She shall marry Dowton,' said the colonel decisively.

'It is probably a pity, but I don't think she will,' replied Dick. 'Of course you can prevent her marrying Angus by simply refusing your consent.'

'Yes, and I shall refuse it.'

'Though it should break her heart she will never complain,' said Dick, 'but it does seem a little hard on Mary that we should mar her life rather than endure a disappointment ourselves.'

'You don't look at it in the proper light,' said the colonel, who, like most persons, made the proper light himself; 'in saving her from this man we do her the greatest kindness in our power.'

'Um,' said Dick, 'of course. That was how I put it to myself, but just consider Angus calmly, and see what case we have against him.'

'He is not a gentleman,' said the colonel.

'He ought not to be, according to the proper light, but he is.'

'Pshaw!' the colonel exclaimed pettishly. 'He may have worked himself up into some sort of position, like other discontented men of his class, but he never had a father.'

'He says he had a very good one. Weigh him, if you like, against Dowton, who is a good fellow in his way, but never, so far as I know, did an honest day's work in his life. Dowton's whole existence has been devoted to pleasure-seeking, while Angus has been climbing up ever since he was born, and with a heavy load on his back, too, most of the time. If he goes on as he is doing, he will have both a good income and a good position shortly.'

'Dowton's position is made,' said the colonel.

'Exactly,' said Dick, 'and Angus is making his for himself. Whatever other distinction we draw between them is a selfish one, and I question if it does us much credit.'

'I have no doubt,' said the colonel, 'that Mary's pride will make her see this matter as I do.'

'It will at least make her sacrifice herself for our pride, if you insist on that.'

Mary's father loved her as he had loved her mother, though he liked to have his own way with both of them. His voice broke a little as he answered Dick.

'You have a poor opinion of your father, my boy,' he said. 'I think I would endure a good deal if Mary were to be the happier for it.'

Dick felt a little ashamed of himself.

'Whatever I may say,' he answered, 'I have at least acted much as you would have done yourself. Forgive me, father.'

The colonel looked up with a wan smile.

'Let us talk of your affairs rather, Richard,' he said. 'I have at least nothing to say against Miss Meredith.'

Dick moved uncomfortably in his chair, and then stood up, thinking he heard a knock at the door.

'Are you there, Abinger?' some one called out. 'I have something very extraordinary to tell you.'

Dick looked at his father, and hesitated. 'It is Angus,' he said.

'Let him in,' said the colonel.

CHAPTER XVI
THE BARBER OF ROTTEN ROW

Rob started when he saw Mary's father.

'We have met before, Mr. Angus,' said the colonel courteously.

'Yes,' answered Rob, without a tremor; 'at Dome Castle, was it not?'

This was the Angus who had once been unable to salute anybody without wondering what on earth he ought to say next. This was the colonel whose hand had gaped five minutes before for Rob's throat. The frown on the face of Mary's father was only a protest against her lover's improved appearance. Rob was no longer the hobbledehoy of last Christmas. He was rather particular about the cut of his coat. He had forgotten that he was not a colonel's social equal. In short, when he entered a room now he knew what to do with his hat. Their host saw the two men measuring each other. Dick never smiled, but sometimes his mouth twitched, as now.

'You had something special to tell me, had you not?' he asked Rob.

'Well,' Rob replied, with hesitation, 'I have something for you in my rooms.'

'Suppose my father,' began Dick, meaning to invite the colonel upstairs, but pausing as he saw Rob's brows contract. The colonel saw too, and resented it. No man likes to be left on the outskirts of a secret.

'Run up yourself, Abinger,' Rob said, seating himself near Mary's father; 'and, stop, here are my keys. I locked it in.'

'Why,' asked Dick, while his father also looked up, 'have you some savage animal up there?'

'No,' Rob said, 'it is very tame.'

Dick climbed the stair, after casting a quizzical look behind him, which meant that he wondered how long the colonel and Rob would last in a small room together. He unlocked the door of Rob's chambers more quickly than he opened it, for he had no notion of what might be caged up inside, and as soon as he had entered he stopped, amazed. All men of course are amazed once in their lives – when they can get a girl to look at them. This was Dick's second time.

It was the hour of the evening when another ten minutes can be stolen from the day by a readjustment of one's window curtains. Rob's blind, however, had given way in the cords, and instead of being pulled up was twisted into two triangles. Just sufficient light straggled through the window to let Dick see the man who was standing on the hearthrug looking sullenly at his boots. There was a smell of oil in the room.

Dowton!' Dick exclaimed; 'what masquerade is this?'

The other put up his elbow as if to ward off a blow, and then Dick opened the eyes of anger.

'Oh,' he said, 'it is you, is it?'

They stood looking at each other in silence.

'Just stand there, my fine fellow,' Dick said, 'until I light the gas. I must have a better look at you.'

The stranger turned longing eyes on the door as the light struck him.

'Not a single step in that direction,' said Dick, 'unless you want to go over the banisters.'

Abinger came closer to the man who was Sir Clement Dowton's double, and looked him over. He wore a white linen jacket, and an apron to match, and it would have been less easy to mistake him for a baronet aping the barber than it had been for the barber to ape the baronet.

'Your name?' asked Dick.

'Josephs,' the other mumbled.

'You are a barber, I presume?'

'I follow the profession of hair-dressing,' replied Josephs, with his first show of spirit.

Had Dick not possessed an inscrutable face, Josephs would have known that his inquisitor was suffering from a sense of the ludicrous. Dick had just remembered that his father was downstairs.

'Well, Josephs, I shall have to hand you over to the police.'

'I think not,' said Josephs, in his gentlemanly voice.

'Why not?' asked Dick.

'Because then it would all come out.'

'What would all come out?'

'The way your father was deceived. The society papers would make a great deal of it, and he would not like that.'

Dick groaned, though the other did not hear him.

'You read the society journals, Josephs?'

'Rather!' said Josephs.

'Perhaps you write for them?'

Josephs did not say.

'Well, how were you brought here?' Dick asked.

'Your friend,' said Josephs sulkily, 'came into our place of business in Southampton Row half an hour ago, and saw me. He insisted on bringing me here at once in a cab. I wanted to put on a black coat, but he would not hear of it.'

'Ah, then, I suppose you gave Mr. Angus the full confession of your roguery as you came along?'

'He would not let me speak,' said Josephs. 'He said it was no affair of his.'

'No? Then you will be so good as to favour me with the pretty story.'

Dick lit a cigar and seated himself. The sham baronet looked undecidedly at a chair.

'Certainly not,' said Dick; 'you can stand.'

Josephs told his tale demurely, occasionally with a gleam of humour, and sometimes with a sigh. His ambition to be a gentleman, but with no desire to know the way, had come to him one day in his youth when another gentleman flung a sixpence at him. In a moment Josephs saw what it was to belong to the upper circles. He hurried to a street corner to get his boots blacked, tossed the menial the sixpence, telling him to keep the change, and returned home in an ecstasy, penniless, but with an object in life. That object was to do it again.

At the age of eighteen Josephs slaved merrily during the week, but had never any money by Monday morning. He was a gentleman every Saturday evening. Then he lived; for the remainder of the week he was a barber. One of his delights at this period was to have his hair cut at Truefitt's and complain that it was badly done. Having reproved his attendant in a gentlemanly way, he tipped him handsomely and retired in a glory. It was about this time that he joined a Conservative association.

Soon afterwards Josephs was to be seen in Rotten Row, in elegant apparel, hanging over the railing. He bowed and raised his hat to the ladies who took his fancy, and, though they did not respond, glowed with the sensation of being practically a man of fashion. Then he returned to the shop.

The years glided by, and Josephs discovered that he was perfectly content to remain a hairdresser if he could be a gentleman now and again. Having supped once in a fashionable restaurant, he was satisfied for a fortnight or so with a sausage and onions at home. Then the craving came back. He saved up for two months on one occasion, and then took Saturday to Monday at Cookham, where he passed as Henry K. Talbot Devereux. He was known to the waiters and boatmen there as the gentleman who had quite a pleasure in tossing them half-crowns, and for a month afterwards he had sausage without onions. So far this holiday had been the memory of his life. He studied the manners and language of the gentlemen who came to the shop in which he was employed, and began to dream of a big thing annually. He had learnt long ago that he was remarkably good-looking.

For a whole year Josephs abstained from being a gentleman except in the smallest way, for he was burning to have a handle to his name, and feared that it could not be done at less than twenty pounds. His week's holiday came, and found Josephs not ready for it. He had only twelve pounds. With a self-denial that was magnificent he crushed his aspirations, took only two days of delight at Brighton, and continued to save up for the title. Next summer saw him at the Anglers' Retreat, near Dome Castle. 'Sir Clement Dowton' was the name on his Gladstone bag. A dozen times a day he looked at it till it frightened him, and then he tore the label off. Having done so, he put on a fresh one.

Josephs had selected his baronetcy with due care. Years previously he had been told that he looked like the twin-brother of Sir Clement Dowton, and on inquiry he had learned that the baronet was not in England. As for the Anglers' Retreat, he went there because he had heard that it was frequented by persons in the rank of life to which it was his intention to belong for the next week. He had never heard of Colonel Abinger until they met. The rest is known. Josephs dwelt on his residence at Dome Castle with his eyes shut, like a street-arab lingering lovingly over the grating of a bakery.

'Well, you are a very admirable rogue,' Dick said, when Josephs had brought his story to an end, 'and, though I shall never be proud again, your fluency excuses our blindness. Where did you pick it up?' The barber glowed with gratification.

'It came naturally to me,' he answered. 'I was intended for a gentleman. I dare say, now, I am about the only case on record of a man who took to pickles and French sauces the first time he tried them. Mushrooms were not an acquired taste with me, nor black coffee, nor caviare, nor liqueurs, and I enjoy celery with my cheese. What I liked best of all was the little round glasses you dip your fingers into when the dinner is finished. I dream of them still.'

'You are burst up for the present, Josephs, I presume?'

'Yes, but I shall be able to do something in a small way next Christmas. I should like to put it off till summer, but I can't.'

'There must be no more donning the name of Dowton,' said Dick, trying to be stern.

'I suppose I shall have to give that up,' the barber said with a sigh. 'I had to bolt, you see, last time, before I meant to go.'

'Ah, you have not told me yet the why and wherefore of those sudden disappearances. Excuse my saying so, Josephs, but they were scarcely gentlemanly.'

'I know it,' said Josephs sadly, 'but however carefully one plans a thing, it may take a wrong turning. The first time I was at the castle I meant to leave in a carriage and pair, waving my handkerchief, but it could not be done at the money.'

'The colonel would have sent you to Silchester in his own trap.'

'Ah, I wanted a brougham. You see I had been a little extravagant at the inn, and I could not summon up courage to leave the castle without tipping the servants all round.'

'So you waited till you were penniless, and then stole away?'

'Not quite penniless,' said Josephs; 'I had three pounds left, but – '

He hesitated.

'You see,' he blurted out, blushing at last, 'my old mother is dependent on me, and I kept the three pounds for her.'

Dick took his cigar from his mouth.

'I am sorry to hear this, Josephs,' he said, 'because I meant to box your ears presently, and I don't know that I can do it now. How about the sudden termination to the visit you honoured the colonel with last Christmas?'

'I had to go,' said Josephs, 'because I read that Sir Clement Dowton had returned to England. Besides, I was due at the shop.'

'But you had an elegant time while your money held out?'

Josephs wiped a smile from his face.

'It was grand,' he said. 'I shall never know such days again.'

'I hope not, Josephs. Was there no streak of cloud in those halcyon days?'

The barber sighed heavily.

'Ay, there was,' he said, 'hair oil.'

'Explain yourself, my gentle hairdresser.'

'Gentlemen,' said Josephs, 'don't use hair oil. I can't live without it. That is my only stumbling-block to being a gentleman.'

He put his fingers through his hair, and again Dick sniffed the odour of oil.

'I had several bottles of it with me,' Josephs continued, 'but I dared not use it.'

'This is interesting,' said Dick. 'I should like to know now, from you who have tried both professions, whether you prefer the gentleman to the barber.'

'I do and I don't,' answered Josephs. 'Hair-dressing suits me best as a business, but gentility for pleasure. A fortnight of the gentleman sets me up for the year. I should not like to be a gentleman all the year round.'

'The hair oil is an insurmountable obstacle.'

'Yes,' said the barber; 'besides, to be a gentleman is rather hard work.'

'I dare say it is,' said Dick, 'when you take a short cut to it. Well, I presume this interview is at an end. You may go.'

He jerked his foot in the direction of the door, but Josephs hesitated.

'Colonel Abinger well?' asked the barber.

'The door, Josephs,' replied Dick.

'And Miss Abinger?'

Dick gave the barber a look that hurried him out of the room and down the stairs. Abinger's mouth twitched every time he took the cigar out of it, until he started to his feet.

'I have forgotten that Angus and my father are together,' he murmured. 'I wonder,' he asked himself, as he returned to his own chambers, 'how the colonel will take this? Must he be told? I think so.'

Colonel Abinger was told, as soon as Rob had left, and it added so much fuel to his passion that it put the fire out.

'If the story gets abroad,' he said, with a shudder, 'I shall never hold up my head again.'

'It is a safe secret,' Dick answered; 'the fellow would not dare to speak of it anywhere. He knows what that would mean for himself.'

'Angus knows of it. Was it like the chivalrous soul you make him to flout this matter before us?'

'You are hard up for an argument against Angus, father. I made him promise to let me know if he ever came on the track of the impostor, and you saw how anxious he was to keep the discovery from you. He asked me at the door when he was going out not to mention it to either you or Mary.'

'Confound him,' cried the colonel testily; 'but he is right about Mary; we need not speak of it to her. She never liked the fellow.'

'That was fortunate,' said Dick, 'but you did, father. You thought that Josephs was a gentleman, and you say that Angus is not. Perhaps you have made a mistake in both cases.'

'I say nothing against Angus,' replied the colonel, 'except that I don't want him to marry my daughter.'

'Oh, you and he got on well together, then?'

'He can talk. The man has improved.'

'You did not talk about Mary?' asked Dick.