a discussion of the rights and wrongs of mankind
with his paternal relative. "Look at Mabel! And I don't care _what_ she
says," with a vindictive glance at the angelic featured Mabel, who
glares back at him with infinite promise of a future settlement of all
their disputes in her ethereal eyes. "'Twas _my_ salt-cellar, not hers!"

"Ladies first--pleasure afterwards," says his father somewhat idly.

"Oh _Freddy_!" says his wife.

"Seditious language _I_ call it," says Jocelyne with a laugh.

"Eh?" says Mr. Monkton. "Why what on earth have I been saying now. I
quite believed I was doing the heavy father to perfection and teaching
Tommy his duty."

"Nice duty," says Jocelyne, with a pretence of indignation, that makes
her charming face a perfect picture. "Teaching him to regard us as
second best! I like that."

"Good heavens! did I give that impression? I must have swooned," says
Mr. Monkton penitently. "When last in my senses I thought I had been
telling Tommy that he deserved a good whipping; and that if good old
Time could so manage as to make me my own father, he would assuredly
have got it."

"Oh! _your_ father!" says Mrs. Monkton in a low tone; there is enough
expression in it, however, to convey the idea to everyone present that
in her opinion her husband's father would be guilty of any atrocity at a
moment's notice.

"Well, _'twas_ my salt-cellar," says Tommy again stoutly, and as if
totally undismayed by the vision of the grand-fatherly scourge held out
to him. After all we none of us feel things much, unless they come
personally home to us.

"Was it?" says Mr. Monkton mildly. "Do you know, I really quite fancied
it was mine."

"What?" says Tommy, cocking his ear. He, like his sister, is in a
certain sense a fraud. For Tommy has the face of a seraph with the heart
of a hardy Norseman. There is nothing indeed that Tommy would not dare.

"Mine, you know," says his father, even more mildly still.

"No, it wasn't," says Tommy with decision, "it was at _my_ side of the
table. _Yours_ is over there."

"Thomas!" says his father, with a rueful shake of the head that
signifies his resignation of the argument; "it is indeed a pity that I
am _not_ like my father!"

"Like him! Oh _no_," says Mrs. Monkton emphatically, impulsively; the
latent dislike to the family who had refused to recognize her on her
marriage with their son taking fire at this speech.

Her voice sounds almost hard--the gentle voice, that