se I'm only an inferior performer, and so I only play when
perfectly alone."

"Egad, if I could only master a waltz, or one of the melodies, I'd be at
it whenever any one would listen to me."

"You're a good soul, and full of amiability, Harcourt," said Upton; but
the words sounded very much as though he said, "You're a dear, good,
sensible creature, without an atom of self-respect or esteem."

Indeed, so conscious was Harcourt that the expression meant no
compliment that he actually reddened and looked away. At last he took
courage to renew the conversation, and said,--

"And what would you advise for the boy, then?"

"I 'd scarcely lay down a system; but I 'll tell you what I would not
do. I 'd not bore him with mathematics; I 'd not put his mind on the
stretch in any direction; I 'd not stifle the development of any taste
that may be struggling within him, but rather encourage and foster it,
since it is precisely by such an indication you 'll get some clew to his
nature. Do you understand me?"

"I 'm not quite sure I do; but I believe you'd leave him to something
like utter idleness."

"What to _you_, my dear Harcourt, would be utter idleness, I've no
doubt; but not to him, perhaps."

Again the Colonel looked mortified, but evidently knew not how to resent
this new sneer.

"Well," said he, after a pause, "the lad will not require to be a
genius."

"So much the better for him, probably; at all events, so much the better
for his friends, and all who are to associate with him."

Here he looked fixedly at Upton, who smiled a most courteous
acquiescence in the opinion,--a politeness that made poor Harcourt
perfectly ashamed of his own rudeness, and he continued hurriedly,--

"He'll have abundance of money. The life Glencore leads here will be
like a long minority to him. A fine old name and title, and the deuce is
in it if he can't rub through life pleasantly enough with such odds."

"I believe you are right, after all, Harcourt," said Upton, sighing, and
now speaking in a far more natural tone; "it _is_ 'rubbing through' with
the best of us, and no more!"

"If you mean that the process is a very irksome one, I enter my dissent
at once," broke in Harcourt. "I 'm not ashamed to own that I like life
prodigiously; and if I be spared to say so, I 'm sure I 'll have the
same story to tell fifteen or twenty years hence; and yet I 'm not a
genius!"

"No," said Upton, smiling a bland assent.

"Nor a philosoph