end he was filled with unreasonable hatred against all
the feeble free, and emerged as a malignant fume, eager to wreak
himself upon the world.

"A sudden thought, George! I see my egg in a new light, and all my
pity changes to respect. Surely it is a most potent egg, a
gallinaceous Swift. After all, anything but pointless and childless,
since it has this strange quality of being offensive and engendering
thought. Food for the mind if not food for the body--didactic if not
delightful--a bit of modern literature, earnest and fundamentally real.
I must try and understand you, Ibsen Ovarum. Possibly it is a profound
parable I have stumbled upon. Though I scarcely reckoned on a parable
with my bread and butter. Frankly, I must confess I bought it for the
eating."

Now that my uncle had at last begun to grasp the true greatness of his
egg, he apparently considered it becoming to drop the tone of
half-patronising pity he had previously adopted. "Come," said he,
smiling, with a dash of raillery, over his coffee-cup; "admit you are a
humbug, you whitened sepulchre of an anticipated chick! Until you
found a congenial soul and overwhelmed me with your confidence, what a
career of deception--not mean, of course, but cynical--ironical--you
have been leading. What a jest it must have been to you to be sold as
new laid! How you laughed in your quiet way at the mockery of life.
Surely it was a worthy pair to Swift in cassock and bands conducting a
marriage service. I can well fancy your silent scorn of the hand that
put you in the bag. New laid! But now I have the full humour of you.
You must pardon my dulness of apprehension. I grasp your meaning now;
your quiet insistent teaching that all life is decay and all decay is
life. No forcing the accent, no crudity, but a pervading persuasion.
A noble gospel!"

He paused impressively, placed the egg respectfully upon his bureau,
and presently went off at a tangent to something else.

"Shall I throw this away?" said the girl.

"Good heavens! Throw it away? Certainly not. Put it in the library."
(The library used to be the corner of the room by the window.)

She stared at me with a certain attempt at confidence. She is a
callous, impertinent kind of girl, and I fear inclined to be bold. "It
_do_ smell, sir," she said to him.

"That's the merit of it. It's irony. Go and put it on the fourth
shelf near the window. There are some yellow-covered books there, and