hat first time
they took us abroad. You were only nine and I was twelve. I heard them.
I was hanging round one evening in that little hotel we stayed at in the
rue de Rivoli--the Hotel de Marsan, wasn't it? The Willoughbys had been
living in Paris for five or six years, and father got them to come home.
I heard him ask mother to talk it up with Mrs. Willoughby. Mother said
she didn't want to, but father got round her, and she agreed to try. She
said, too, that Bessie might be willing because Len had already begun to
take too much and it would brace him up if he got work to do."

"Work!" Claude sniffed. "Him!"

"Father knew he couldn't work--knew he'd tried all sorts of
things--first to be an artist, then to write, then to get into the
consular service, and the Lord knows what. It wasn't his work that
father was after. It was just when the Toogood estate withdrew old Mr.
Toogood's money, and father had to have more capital."

"Well, Len Willoughby didn't have any."

"No; but his wife had. It came to the same thing. Suppose she must have
had between three and four hundred thousand from old man Brand. I
remember hearing father say to mother that Len was making ducks and
drakes of it as fast as he could, and that it might as well help the
firm of Toogood & Masterman as go to the deuce. Can still hear father
feeding the poor fool with bluff about the great banker he'd make and
how it was the dead loss of a fortune that he hadn't had a seat on the
Stock Exchange years before."

Claude sniffed again. "You'd better carry your load to father himself."

"I will--if I have to." Before Claude had found a rejoinder, Thor went
on, changing the subject abruptly, so as not to be led into being
indiscreet, "Say, Claude, do you remember Fay, the gardener?"

Claude was still smoothing his gloves, but he stopped, with the thumb
and fingers of his right hand grasping the middle finger of the left.
More than ever his features suggested a marble stoniness. "No."

"Oh, but you must. Used to be Grandpa Thorley's gardener. Has the
greenhouses on father's land north of the pond."

Claude recovered himself slightly. "Well, what about him?"

"Been to see his wife. Patient of Uncle Sim's. Turned her on to me.
They're having the deuce of a time."

Claude recovered himself still more. He looked at his brother curiously.
"Well, what's it got to do with me?"

"Nothing directly."

"Well, then--indirectly?" Claude asked, defiantly.

"Only