less pleasant of the slighting way in which once or twice his
sister had spoken of "Belinda and Co.," meaning by that the mother of
this pretty piece of pretty girlhood, and the girl herself.

"She tries hard to read because we expect her to," continued Lady
Dashwood. "If she had her own way she would throw the books into the
fire, as tiresome stodge."

The Warden was listening with an averted face and now he remarked--

"Did you come in, Lena, to tell me this?"

When the Warden was annoyed there was in his voice and in his manner a
"something" which many people called "formidable." As Lady Dashwood
stood looking down at him, there flashed into her mind a scene of long
ago, where the Warden, then an undergraduate, had (for a joke at a
party in his rooms) induced by suggestion a very small weak man with
peaceful principles to insist on fighting the Stroke of the college
Eight, a man over six feet and broad in proportion. She remembered how
she had laughed, and yet how she made her brother promise not to
exercise that power again. Probably he had completely forgotten the
incident. Why! it was nearly eighteen years ago, nearly nineteen; and
here was James Middleton no longer an undergraduate but the Warden! Lady
Dashwood bent over him smiling and laid her solid motherly hand upon his
head. "Oh, dear, how time passes!" she said. "Jim, you are such a sweet
lamb. No, I didn't come to tell you that. I came to ask you if you were
going to dine with us this evening?"

"Yes," said the Warden. "Why?" and he now looked round at his sister
without a trace of irritability and smiled.

"Because Mrs. Jack Dashwood is coming here. I didn't mention it before.
Well, the fact is she happens to have a few days' rest from her work in
London. She is with some relative in Malvern and coming on here this
afternoon."

"Mrs. Jack Dashwood!" repeated the Warden with evident indifference.

"Jack Dashwood's widow. You remember my John's nephew Jack? Poor Jack
who was killed at Mons!"

Yes, the Warden remembered, and his face clouded as it always did when
war was mentioned.

"May and he were engaged as boy and girl--and I think she stuck to
it--because she thought she was in honour bound. Some women are like
that--precious few; and some men."

The Warden listened without remark.

"And I am just going to telephone to Mr. Boreham," said Lady Dashwood,
"to ask him to come in to dinner to meet her!"

"Boreham!" groaned the Warden, and he