"if you're so anxious to spend
that money of yours in charity, why don't you found a Day Nursery for
the Children of Philanthropists--a place where advanced men and women
can leave their offspring in capable hands when they're busied with
Mothers' Meetings and Educational Conferences? It would do a thousand
times more good, I can tell you, than that fresh kindergarten scheme
of yours for teaching the children of the labouring classes to make a
new sort of mud-pie."

"You don't understand these things, attractive," Margaret gently
pointed out. "You aren't in harmony with the trend of modern thought."

"No, thank God!" said the Colonel, heartily.

Ensued a silence during which he chipped at his egg-shell in an
absent-minded fashion.

"That fellow Kennaston said anything to you yet?" he presently
queried.

"I--I don't understand," she protested--oh, perfectly unconvincingly.
The tea-making, too, engrossed her at this point to an utterly
improbable extent.

Thus it shortly befell that the Colonel, still regarding her under
intent brows, cleared his throat and made bold to question her
generosity in the matter of sugar; five lumps being, as he suggested,
a rather unusual allowance for one cup.

Then, "Mr. Kennaston and I are very good friends," said she, with
dignity. And having spoiled the first cup in the making, she began on
another.

"Glad to hear it," growled the old gentleman. "I hope you value his
friendship sufficiently not to marry him. The man's a fraud--a flimsy,
sickening fraud, like his poetry, begad, and that's made up of botany
and wide margins and indecency in about equal proportions. It ain't
fit for a woman to read--in fact, a woman ought not to read anything;
a comprehension of the Decalogue and the cookery-book is enough
learning for the best of 'em. Your mother never--never--"

Colonel Hugonin paused and stared at the open window for a little. He
seemed to be interested in something a great way off.

"We used to read Ouida's books together," he said, somewhat wistfully.
"Lord, Lord, how she revelled in Chandos and Bertie Cecil and those
dashing Life Guardsmen! And she used to toss that little head of hers
and say I was a finer figure of a man than any of 'em--thirty
years ago, good Lord! And I was then, but I ain't now. I'm only a
broken-down, cantankerous old fool," declared the Colonel, blowing
his nose violently, "and that's why I'm quarrelling with the dearest,
foolishest daughter man e