ntemplation, saying at last: "You do see what I mean, don't you,
father?"

"I do."

"That we ought to do something friendly?"

"He has certainly, through your idiotic fault, contrived to put us
under an obligation. Why, I cannot think, but the fact remains. I do
not know anything that could have annoyed me more."

Grantly ventured to think that perhaps a paragraph in the police
reports of the local newspaper might have tried the Squire even more
severely, but he did not say so. He waited.

"Does your mother know of all this?"

"Oh no, father, it would make her so sorry. Must we tell her?"

"Your tenderness for her feelings in no way restrained you at the time;
why this solicitude now?"

"I'd rather she knew than seem to go back on Gallup."

"You may go, Grantly, and leave me to digest this particularly
disagreeable intelligence. I have long reconciled myself to your lack
of intellectual ability, but I did not know that you indulged in such
coarse pleasures."

"Father--did you never do anything of that kind when you were young?"

"Most truthfully I can answer that I never did. It would not have
amused me in the least."

"It didn't _amuse_ me," Grantly said ruefully; "I can't remember much
about it."

"Go," said Mr Ffolliot, and Grantly went, looking rather like Parker
with his tail between his legs.

Hardly had Mr Ffolliot realised the import of what Grantly had told him
when the door was opened again and Buz came in.

Buz, too, made straight for the hearth-rug, and standing there faced
his bewildered parent (these sudden invasions were wholly without
precedent), saying: "I've come to tell you, sir, that I think we
_ought_ to ask Mr Gallup to dinner."

Had Mr Ffolliot been a man of his hands he would have fallen upon Buz
and boxed his ears there and then; as it was, he replied bitterly:

"I am not interested in your opinion, boy, on this or any other
subject. Leave the room at once."

But Buz, to his father's amazement, stood his ground.

"You must hear me, father, else you can't understand."

"If you've come to say anything about Grantly you may spare yourself
the pains, he has told me himself."

"About Grantly," Buz repeated stupidly, "why should I want to talk
about Grantly?--it's about him and me I want to talk."

"Him and you?" Mr Ffolliot echoed desperately.

"Yes, I rotted him that night and he was awfully decent----"

"What night?"

"The night I broke my arm--they said at