s quite sure that he wanted Sally. There had been moments when
he had been conscious of certain doubts, but in the smart of temporary
defeat these had vanished. That streak of Bohemianism in her which from
time to time since their first meeting had jarred upon his orderly
mind was forgotten; and all that Mr. Carmyle could remember was the
brightness of her eyes, the jaunty lift of her chin, and the gallant
trimness of her. Her gay prettiness seemed to flick at him like a whip
in the darkness of wakeful nights, lashing him to pursuit. And quietly
and methodically, like a respectable wolf settling on the trail of a Red
Riding Hood, he prepared to pursue. Delicacy and imagination might have
kept him back, but in these qualities he had never been strong. One
cannot have everything.

His preparations for departure, though he did his best to make them
swiftly and secretly, did not escape the notice of the Family. In many
English families there seems to exist a system of inter-communication
and news-distribution like that of those savage tribes in Africa who
pass the latest item of news and interest from point to point over
miles of intervening jungle by some telepathic method never properly
explained. On his last night in London, there entered to Bruce
Carmyle at his apartment in South Audley Street, the Family's chosen
representative, the man to whom the Family pointed with pride--Uncle
Donald, in the flesh.

There were two hundred and forty pounds of the flesh Uncle Donald was
in, and the chair in which he deposited it creaked beneath its burden.
Once, at Monk's Crofton, Sally had spoiled a whole morning for her
brother Fillmore, by indicating Uncle Donald as the exact image of
what he would be when he grew up. A superstition, cherished from early
schooldays, that he had a weak heart had caused the Family's managing
director to abstain from every form of exercise for nearly fifty years;
and, as he combined with a distaste for exercise one of the three
heartiest appetites in the south-western postal division of London,
Uncle Donald, at sixty-two, was not a man one would willingly have
lounging in one's armchairs. Bruce Carmyle's customary respectfulness
was tinged with something approaching dislike as he looked at him.

Uncle Donald's walrus moustache heaved gently upon his laboured breath,
like seaweed on a ground-swell. There had been stairs to climb.

"What's this? What's this?" he contrived to ejaculate at last. "You