wered my mother, "it's in the blood. I've often
thought that you, Luke, ought to have been a poet."

"I never had the time," said the grey man. "There were one or two little
things--"

"They were very beautiful," interrupted my mother. The clatter of the
knives and forks continued undisturbed for a few moments. Then continued
the grey man:

"There would be no harm, provided I made enough. It's the law of nature.
One generation earns, the next spends. We must see. In any case, I think
I should prefer Oxford for him."

"It will be so hard parting from him," said my mother.

"There will be the vacations," said the grey man, "when we shall
travel."

CHAPTER II.

IN WHICH PAUL MAKES ACQUAINTANCE OF THE MAN WITH THE UGLY MOUTH.

The case of my father and mother was not normal. You understand they
had been separated for some years, and though they were not young in
age--indeed, before my childish eyes they loomed quite ancient folk,
and in fact my father must have been nearly forty and my mother quit of
thirty--yet, as you will come to think yourself, no doubt, during the
course of my story, they were in all the essentials of life little more
than boy and girl. This I came to see later on, but at that time, had I
been consulted by enquiring maid or bachelor, I might unwittingly have
given wrong impressions concerning marriage in the general. I should
have described a husband as a man who could never rest quite content
unless his wife were by his side; who twenty times a day would call from
his office door: "Maggie, are you doing anything important? I want to
talk to you about a matter of business." ... "Maggie, are you alone? Oh,
all right, I'll come down." Of a wife I should have said she was a woman
whose eyes were ever love-lit when resting on her man; who was glad
where he was and troubled where he was not. But in every case this might
not have been correct.

Also, I should have had something to say concerning the alarms and
excursions attending residence with any married couple. I should have
recommended the holding up of feet under the table lest, mistaken for
other feet, they should be trodden on and pressed. Also, I should have
advised against entry into any room unpreceded by what in Stageland
is termed "noise without." It is somewhat disconcerting to the nervous
incomer to be met, the door still in his hand, by a sound as of people
springing suddenly into the air, followed by a weird scuttling of feet,