poor fellow. You had your own room, you know, and you did it up. But he
will get his knighthood and a pension, I believe," she said, turning to
Ralph, "only it is not England."

"No," Mrs. Cosham confirmed her, "it is not England. In those days we
thought an Indian Judgeship about equal to a county-court judgeship at
home. His Honor--a pretty title, but still, not at the top of the tree.
However," she sighed, "if you have a wife and seven children, and people
nowadays very quickly forget your father's name--well, you have to take
what you can get," she concluded.

"And I fancy," Mrs. Milvain resumed, lowering her voice rather
confidentially, "that John would have done more if it hadn't been for
his wife, your Aunt Emily. She was a very good woman, devoted to him, of
course, but she was not ambitious for him, and if a wife isn't ambitious
for her husband, especially in a profession like the law, clients soon
get to know of it. In our young days, Mr. Denham, we used to say that we
knew which of our friends would become judges, by looking at the girls
they married. And so it was, and so, I fancy, it always will be. I don't
think," she added, summing up these scattered remarks, "that any man is
really happy unless he succeeds in his profession."

Mrs. Cosham approved of this sentiment with more ponderous sagacity from
her side of the tea-table, in the first place by swaying her head, and
in the second by remarking:

"No, men are not the same as women. I fancy Alfred Tennyson spoke the
truth about that as about many other things. How I wish he'd lived to
write 'The Prince'--a sequel to 'The Princess'! I confess I'm almost
tired of Princesses. We want some one to show us what a good man can be.
We have Laura and Beatrice, Antigone and Cordelia, but we have no heroic
man. How do you, as a poet, account for that, Mr. Denham?"

"I'm not a poet," said Ralph good-humoredly. "I'm only a solicitor."

"But you write, too?" Mrs. Cosham demanded, afraid lest she should
be balked of her priceless discovery, a young man truly devoted to
literature.

"In my spare time," Denham reassured her.

"In your spare time!" Mrs. Cosham echoed. "That is a proof of devotion,
indeed." She half closed her eyes, and indulged herself in a fascinating
picture of a briefless barrister lodged in a garret, writing immortal
novels by the light of a farthing dip. But the romance which fell upon
the figures of great writers and illumined their pages wa