osition. Ormiston read and answered her thought.

"Oh! we are going to do something to change all that," he said
confidently. "We are going to enlarge our borders a bit; aren't we,
Dick? Only, I think, we should manage matters much better if Miss
Cathcart would help us, don't you?"

Richard remembering the locked-up room of evil contents and that
proposal of inclusive funeral rites, gave this utterance a wholly
individual application. His face grew bright with intelligence. But,
greatly restraining himself, he refrained from speech. All that had
been revealed to him in confidence, and so his honour was engaged to
silence.

Ormiston pulled forward a chair and sat down by him, leaning forward,
his hands clasped about one knee, while he gazed at the tulips
scattered on the floor.

"So tell Miss Cathcart we all want her to come over to Brockhurst just
as often as she can," he continued, "and help us to make the wheels go
round a little faster. Tell her we've grown very old, and discreet, and
respectable, and that we are absolutely incapable of doing or saying
anything foolish or naughty, which she would object to--and----"

But Richard could restrain himself no longer. "Why don't you tell her
yourself, Uncle Roger?"

"Because, my dear old chap, a burnt child fears the fire. I tried to
tell Miss Cathcart something once, long ago. She mayn't remember----"

"She does remember," Mary said quietly, looking down at Richard's hand
and patting it as it lay on her lap.

"But she stopped me dead," Ormiston went on. "It was quite right of
her. She gave the most admirable reasons for stopping me. Would you
care to hear them?"

"Oh! don't, pray don't," Mary murmured. "It is not generous."

"Pardon me, your reasons were absolutely just--true in substance and in
fact. You said I was a selfish, good-for-nothing spendthrift, and
so----"

"I was odious," she broke in. "I was a self-righteous little
Pharisee--forgive me----"

"Why--there's nothing to forgive. You spoke the truth."

"I don't believe it," Richard cried, in vehement protest.

"Dickie, you're a darling," Mary Cathcart said.

Colonel Ormiston left off nursing his knee, and leaned a little further
forward.

"Well then, will you come over to Brockhurst very often, and help us to
make the wheels go round, and cheer us all up, and do us no end of
good, though--I am a selfish, good-for-nothing spendthrift? You see I
run through the list of my titles again to make s