, and aunt would
have enjoyed the spectacle of his bliss; and all four of them would have
successfully pretended to their gullible consciences that an
indiscretion had not been committed. Here it must be said that the
Achilles' heel of Henry Shakspere Knight lay in his stomach. Despite his
rosy cheeks and pervading robustness, despite the fact that his infancy
had been almost immune from the common ailments--even measles--he
certainly suffered from a form of chronic dyspepsia. Authorities
differed upon the cause of the ailment. Some, such as Tom, diagnosed
the case in a single word. Mr. Knight, less abrupt, ascribed the evil to
Mrs. Knight's natural but too solicitous endeavours towards keeping up
the strength of her crescent son. Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie regarded it
as a misfortune simply, inexplicable, unjust, and cruel. But even Mrs.
Knight and Aunt Annie had perceived that there was at least an apparent
connection between hot buttered toast and the recurrence of the malady.
Hence, though the two women would not admit that this connection was
more than a series of unfortunate coincidences, Henry had been advised
to deprive himself of hot buttered toast. And here came Tom, with his
characteristic inconvenience, to catch them in the very midst of their
folly, and to make even Mr. Knight, that mask of stern rectitude, a
guilty accessory before the fact.

'It's only this once!' Mrs. Knight protested.

'You're quite right,'said Tom. 'It's only this once.'

Henry took the piece of toast, and then, summoning for one supreme
effort all the spiritual courage which he had doubtless inherited from
a long line of Puritan ancestors, he nobly relinquished it.

Mr. Knight's eyes indicated to Tom that a young man who was constantly
half an hour late for breakfast had no moral right to preach abstinence
to a growing boy, especially on his birthday. But the worst thing about
Tom was that he was never under any circumstances abashed.

'As nothing is worse than hot toast cold,' Tom imperturbably remarked,
'I'll eat it at once.' And he ate the piece of toast.

No one could possibly blame Tom. Nevertheless, every soul round the
table did the impossible and blamed him. The atmosphere lost some of its
festive quality.

Tom Knight was nineteen, thin, pale, and decidedly tall; and his fair
hair still curled slightly on the top of his head. In twelve years his
development, too, had amounted to a miracle, or would have amounted to a
m