iven with his
Lankester book."

"But--we said--we wouldn't have him driven for the world. Papa can
wait. He _has_ waited."

I ignored it and the tragic implication.

"You see," I said, "Lankester's book's awfully important. It means
no end to him. If he makes the fine thing of it we think he will,
it'll place him. What's more, it'll place Lankester. He's still--as
far as the big outside public is concerned--waiting to be placed."

"He mustn't wait," she said. "It's all right. Grevill knows. We told
him he was to do Lankester first."

I groaned. "It doesn't matter," I said, "which he does first."

"You mean he'll be driven anyway?"

It was so far from what I meant that I could only stare at her and
at her frightful failure to perceive.

I went at it again, as I thought, with a directness that left
nothing to her intelligence. I told her what I meant was that he
couldn't do them both.

But she didn't see it. She just looked at me with her terrible
innocence.

"You mean it's too much for him?"

And I tried to begin again with no, it wasn't exactly that--but she
went on over me.

It wouldn't be too much for him if he didn't go at it so hard. He
was giving himself more to do than was necessary. He'd marked so
many things for omission; and, of course, the more he left out of
"Papa," the more he had to put in of his own.

"And he needn't," she said. "There's such a lot of Papa."

I knew. I scowled miserably at that. How was I going to tell her it
was the whole trouble, that there was "such a lot of Papa"?

I said there was; but, on the other hand, he needed such a lot of
editing.

She said that was just what they had to think about. _Did_ he?

I remembered Burton's theory, and I put it to her point-blank. Had
she read all of him?

She flushed slightly. No, she said, not all. But Mamma had.

"Then" (I skirmished), "you don't really know?"

She parried it with "Mamma knows."

And I thrust. "But," I said, "does your mother really understand?"

I saw her wince.

"Do you mean," she said, "there are things--things in it that had
better be kept out?"

"No," I said, "there weren't any 'things' in it----"

"There couldn't be," she said superbly. "Not things we'd want to
hide."

I said there weren't. It wasn't "things" at all. I shut my eyes and
went at it head downward.

It was, somehow, the whole thing.

"The whole thing?" she said, and I saw that I had hit her hard.

"The whole thing," I said.