ick one on the library table. Mary had gone in last night to lock
the windows, and saw it, and knew he had forgotten to leave it in the
hall. He often did forget. It was stamped and sealed. And the furnace
man came then. Raven thought he might, in another minute, be groaning
into her sympathetic ear; so he shut her up with an assurance that it
was all right. But he felt the sweat start on his forehead at the
picture of Dick sitting down to breakfast--Dick always ordered a big
breakfast, having a hunter's appetite and a general impression that, the
more he nourished himself, the more manly it would make his nose--and
poring over the fable of his uncle's soul, or what seemed to be his
soul, with eyes strained to their limit of credulity. However, it was of
no use. Nothing was of any use when destiny had one of those ironic fits
of hers and sat down to make a caricature of you, just for the fun of
bursting her old sides over it. He dressed in a dogged haste, wondering
if he'd better telephone Dick and ask him not to open any letter he
might have from him that morning, and then dismissing it, because it had
assuredly been received and Dick was now absorbing it with his chops and
eggs.

Raven went down to his own eggs in a grim and sulky frame of mind. He
would repudiate the letter, if need be, tell Dick it was only something
he had written as a literary experiment and thought he'd try it on the
dog. But the moment he heard the boy's key in the door and then his step
through the hall, he knew he could not, for some unexplained reason
inherent in his own frame of mind, "put it over." It was as if Dick
represented the universe Raven was arraigning, was counsel for it, so to
speak, and Raven had got, in sheer decency of honor, to stand to his
guns. But it was all worse than he thought. Dick's entrance was so
quick, his onslaught so unstudied, his glance so full of alarmed
commiseration, that Raven saw at once he had been shocked out of all
manly proprieties. Dick caught at a chair, on the way to the table,
brought it with him and, placing it at a near angle to Raven's, dropped
into it as if exhausted.

"I'd no idea," he began, "why, I'd no more idea----"

Raven's hand tightened on his fork. Then he laid the fork down, for,
after all, he had finished breakfast, and might as well make the most of
running his hands into his pockets and shutting them there.

"Morning, Dick," he said. "Have in some toast and eggs?"

Dick, in no