k him to come and stay with us as soon as Jack Ward had
gone, and I had already told my mother about his illness, though I had
never mentioned the life-saving tale. I had often wanted to ask my
father what really happened, only having made a promise, I had got to
stick to it, and I wished I had never been fool enough to make it; it
seemed to be making a lot of fuss about nothing. But, if I could
persuade Owen to come, the whole thing would have to be cleared up, and
I thought being in the country would do him so much good, that the
Professor would make him come whether he wanted to or not. I did not
know quite what my father would say when he heard all about Owen, for
in some ways he belonged to what, I believe, is called "the old
school," and clung tenaciously to the belief that there was not a
Radical yet born who did not work night and day for the destruction of
the British Empire. We never talked politics at home, though sometimes
we listened to a lecture. But, as Owen said that he would never have
lived if it had not been for my father, they ought, I imagined, to have
a sort of friendly feeling for each other, though I cannot say that I
felt any great confidence in this idea. I relied more on the fact that
as soon as you had removed the crust from my father, you found a huge
lot of kindness underneath it. He liked to complain, and some people,
who knew him very slightly, thought he liked nothing else, but they
were most hopelessly wrong.

My chief recollection of that walk along Victoria Street is that my
umbrella was constantly bumping into other umbrellas; I must have tried
to walk too fast, and the result was that by the time I reached the
Professor's, I was hot and splashed, and my umbrella had a large rent
in it. The door of the house was open, and I saw a notice hanging on
the side of the wall which told me to walk up-stairs. What I was to do
when I had walked up-stairs puzzled me, so I went back into the street,
and having rung a bell as a sort of announcement that some one was
coming, I went up slowly. The house seemed to be full of stuffiness
and gloom, so much so that had I been unable to find either the
Professor or his son, I should not have been at all sorry. I was,
however, met on the first landing by a servant who must have been
cleaning a grate when I interrupted her. Her hair was straying over
her face, and as she stood waiting for me to explain my business, she
tried to arrange it prop