LITMIR.BIZ

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to be left alone, Chloe? Is it true, Chloe, that the older a woman gets the bigger fool she is?"

      Chloe said it was true.

      "I'll ask Titania to let Bob come over," said Penelope. "He's the wisest person I know."

      Bob was Titania's grandson, and was certainly young enough to be wise, as he was only fourteen. He had been sent to three of the great public schools, and had been taken away because of his fighting capabilities. He never knew when he had enough, and it is quite impossible to keep a boy at any school if he breaks out of bounds to fight some young butcher or baker in a back alley at least once a week. Now he had a tutor who had been an amateur boxer of great merit. It began to take the tutor all his time to handle his pupil. But if Bob was knocked endways about three times a week, it sobered him and made him do his work. He did not yet know whether he wanted to be a prize-fighter or the commander-in-chief. But he loved Penelope.

      "I'll send for Bob," said Penelope.

      And Bob came with Mr. Guthrie, his tutor, and Titania was glad to get rid of him for a time.

      "Oh, Pen," said Bob, "how jolly kind of you to ask me. I'm sick of grandmother; she worries me to death. Always says, 'Robert, you mustn't.' I say, have you read Kip's 'Cat that Walked by Himself'? Mr. Guthrie says it's splendid, and I say it's rot. But old Guth likes Virgil and Horace. Isn't that strange, for he can box like anything. Baker, the groom, says he can. And Baker's awful good with the mitts. But I say, Pen, what's all this about you in the papers? Grandmother wails when she sees one now. I ain't sure I like having you so much in the papers, Pen."

      "I don't like it, either," said Penelope, "but I can't help it."

      "Is it true that you're going to be married and never tell any one?" demanded Bob from the bottom of a huge rocking-chair, as they sat on the lawn. They were in one of Pen's habitable houses, and the lawn ran down to the Thames.

      "I won't if I don't want to," said Penelope. "But you're a boy, Bob, and don't understand these things."

      Bob snorted and smiled, not unsubtly.

      "Oh, Pen, don't be like grandmother. I understand pretty nearly everything now. Granny's always saying that, and it's jolly rot. You can't be like me, turned out of three schools, and not know something. Are you going to get married soon?"

      Pen shook her head.

      "She's very savage at your knowing that Jew cad, Gordon, but grandfather isn't. He says that Gordon may be a Jew, of course, but he's all right. I asked him if I could get put on a board as a director, and he was so mad with me. I think Gordon's asked him to be a director, and he'd like to only he daren't. He's got none too much money, you know, Pen. But about all these chaps, Pen?"

      He went through the horde seriatim, and pronounced upon them all with ineffable wisdom.

      "Goby's an ass, but a good ass, Pen," he said, as he kicked with his legs. "He gave me a thick-un a year ago when I was in difficulties. But he hasn't the brains to make a good corporal. Baker says that. Baker was a sergeant in the Dublin Fusiliers. I like Plant, though, Pen. Baker says he rides in a rummy fashion, more like a circus man than anything else, but he can stick to a horse. And there's your Frenchman. I say, how does he come to be called Rivaulx? Was he called after Rivaulx in Yorkshire, or was it called after him? Ask him if he shoots larks in his native country. All Frenchmen do, old Guth says. He says he read a book the other day in which a French priest says he never sees a lark without wanting to shoot it. What a miserable rotter, wasn't he? But Rivaulx isn't so bad, though. He's a gentleman, at any rate, though he is French. I say, why do foreigners never look like gentlemen? Dashed if I know. I've often wondered, because grandfather likes them, through his having been an ambassador. Sometimes a German does, though. And Bramber's all right, Pen. I don't think I'd mind your marrying him."

      "I won't marry any one who isn't a useful citizen," said Pen.

      "He's all right," urged Bob. "He's as strong as a bull. Baker says he'd peel better than most prize-fighters. What is a useful citizen? I say, if you get married, you'll tell me who it is?"

      "No," said Penelope.

      "I call that mean," said Bob. "I'd not tell any one, and I'd help like fun."

      "I'm sure you would, Bob. But I may never get married."

      "Rot," said Bob, "a girl like you not get married! Oh, I say!"

      And he continued to say for some hours, and proved himself most entertaining company, quoting Baker, who had been a sergeant in the Dublin Fusiliers, and had been very severely knocked about by Jem Mace, and appealing to Mr. Guthrie, who came over with him to get him to look at a book in the mornings, to back him up. He was really very modest and gentlemanly, at the same time that he was exceedingly bumptious and arrogant, after the best manner of the extremely healthy English boy.

      And at twelve o'clock he came running to Penelope and Chloe by the river-bank in wild excitement.

      "I say, Pen, I say, Pen, there's old Goby coming, and with that miserable rotter who makes poetry. What's brought 'em here?"

      "I asked them to lunch," said Pen.

      "Eh, what?" cried Bob. "Goby and that rotter, Austin de Vere! I say, Mr. Guthrie—"

      He ran off to Guthrie, bawling:

      "I say, Mr. Guthrie, here's that poet chap, Austin de Vere, come. Didn't you say he mostly wrote rot?"

      And Goby and De Vere came across the lawn together, like a mastiff and a Maltese in company. They made each other as nervous as cats, and couldn't for their lives understand why they were asked together.

      "The clumsy brute," said De Vere.

      "The verse-making monkey," said Goby.

      But tailors could have admired them both. They were perfect. And lunch was a most painful function, only endurable to Penelope because she was on the track of her duty, and to Chloe because she laughed internally, and to Mr. Guthrie (who was really a clever man) because he liked to study men and manners, and to Bob because he talked all the time, owing to the silence of the others.

      "I say, Captain Goby, I've got a splendid bull-pup. Baker got him for me, cheap, for a quid,—a sovereign, I mean. You remember Baker. He was a sergeant,—oh, I told you that just now. Do you like bulldogs, Mr. de Vere?"

      De Vere was politely sulky.

      "Bulldogs, oh, ah, well, I do not know that I do."

      He looked at Goby, who was also sulky and feeling very much out of it. But the subject of bulldogs appealed to him, because he saw it didn't amuse his rival.

      "I'll give you a real good pup, Bob," he said, good-naturedly; "one that no one could get for a sovereign.

      "A real pedigree pup?"

      "With a pedigree as long as your own," said Goby.

      Bob sighed, and laid his hand on Goby's.

      "I say, Pen, isn't Captain Goby a real good 'un?" he asked. "Baker says—"

      But what Baker said does not come into this history, as the lunch finished, and they all went into the garden. Goby spoke to Bob as they went out.

      "I say, Bob, get hold of that ass De Vere, and talk to him as hard as the very deuce, will you?"

      "You meant that about the pup?" said Bob.

      "Of course, Bob."

      "I'll talk his beastly head off," said Bob.

      And this was why Penelope spoke confidentially to Captain Goby before she did so to the poet. She was exceedingly pale and very dignified, but she lost no time in getting to the point.

      "Captain Goby," she said, "you have asked me to marry you at least three times."

      Goby sighed.

      "Is it only three?" he demanded, and he added, firmly, "it will be more yet."

      "And I said 'no' because I had no idea of marrying any one."

      "That

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