e of the legal fiction; all babes born in matrimony
are legally the children of their mother's husband, _quand-meme_. He
must make that his sheet-anchor.

"You know, Sallykin, your father and mother fell out before you were
born. And the first time I saw your mother--why, bless my soul, my
dear! you were quite a growing girl--yes, able to get a staff-officer's
thumb in your mouth, and bite it. Indeed, you did! It was General
Pellew; they say he's going to be made a peer." The Major thinks he
sees his way out of the fire by sinking catechism in reminiscences. "I
can recollect it all as if it were yesterday. I said to him, 'Who's the
poor pretty little mother, General?' Because he knew your mother, and
I didn't. 'Don't you know?' said he. 'She's Mrs. Graythorpe.' I asked
about her husband, but Pellew had known nothing except that there was
a row, and they had parted." The Major's only fiction here was that he
substituted the name Graythorpe for Palliser. "Next time I saw her we
picked up some acquaintance, and she asked if I was a Lincolnshire
Lund, because her father always used to talk of how he went to Lund's
father's, near Crowland, when he was a boy. 'Stop a bit,' said I; 'what
was your father's name?' 'Paul Nightingale,' says she." Observe that
nothing was untrue in this, because Rosey always spoke and thought of
Paul Nightingale as her father.

"That was my grandfather?" Sally was intent on accumulating
facts--would save up analysis till after. The Major took advantage of
a slight choke over his whiskey to mix a brief nod into it; it was a
lie--but, then, he himself couldn't have said which was nod and which
was choke; so it hardly counted. He continued, availing himself at
times of the remains of the choke to help him to slur over difficult
passages.

"He was the young brother of a sort of sweetheart of mine--a silly
boyish business--a sort of calf-love. She married and died. But he was
her great pet, a favourite younger brother. One keeps a recollection
of this sort of thing."--The Major makes a parade of his powers of
oblivion, and his failure to carry it out sits well upon him.--"Of
course, my romantic memories"--the Major smiles derision of Love's
young dream--"had something to do with my interest in your mother, but
I hope I should have done the same if there had been no such thing.
Well, the mere fact of your father's behaviour to your mother...." He
stopped short, with misgivings that his policy of talki