endent on service and on fitness, and open to both
sexes; and to me in especial he held out hopes of speedy advancement.
But in its initial stages the thing wouldn't work properly unless he
were first and only Lord. Then I put my foot down promptly, and said it
was all rot, and I didn't see the good of any House of Lords at all.
'Then you must be a low Radical!' said Edward, with fine contempt. The
inference seemed hardly necessary, but what could I do? I accepted the
situation, and said firmly, Yes, I was a low Radical. In this monstrous
character I had been obliged to masquerade ever since; but now I could
throw it off, and look the world in the face again.

And yet, did this and other gains really outbalance my losses?
Henceforth I should, it was true, be leader and chief; but I should
also be the buffer between the Olympians and my little clan. To Edward
this had been nothing; he had withstood the impact of Olympus without
flinching, like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved. But was I equal to the
task? And was there not rather a danger that for the sake of peace and
quietness I might be tempted to compromise, compound, and make terms?
sinking thus, by successive lapses, into the Blameless Prig? I don't
mean, of course, that I thought out my thoughts to the exact point here
set down. In those fortunate days of old one was free from the hard
necessity of transmuting the vague idea into the mechanical inadequate
medium of words. But the feeling was there, that I might not possess the
qualities of character for so delicate a position.

The unnatural halo round Edward got more pronounced, his own demeanour
more responsible and dignified, with the arrival of his new clothes.
When his trunk and play-box were sent in, the approaching cleavage
between our brother, who now belonged to the future, and ourselves,
still claimed by the past, was accentuated indeed. His name was painted
on each of them, in large letters, and after their arrival their owner
used to disappear mysteriously, and be found eventually wandering round
his luggage, murmuring to himself, 'Edward ----,' in a rapt remote sort
of way. It was a weakness, of course, and pointed to a soft spot in his
character; but those who can remember the sensation of first seeing
their names in print will not think hardly of him.

As the short days sped by and the grim event cast its shadow longer and
longer across our threshold, an unnatural politeness, a civility scarce
canny,