only a dummy."

"A good big dummy," I answered, with the intention of taking myself off
pleasantly.

"Oh, be rude. Trample on me, call me names," and then swelling out his
chest and glaring at me, he added, "Hit me."

"I shouldn't care to risk it," I returned, and asked Hubert, who had
been walking aimlessly round the room, if he was ready.

We left at last, and were pursued down-stairs by volleys of apologies.
I had to stop twice and shout back that I was not offended and that I
forgave everything, though from the way I had talked to him it struck
me that he had about as much to forgive as I had.

We walked towards Victoria without speaking, and when I did try to talk
I was most horribly hoarse, I must have fairly shouted at the Professor.

"My father's often like that after an afternoon off," Owen said
presently. "He's first angry and then apologetic, and in the end he's
most horribly ashamed of himself. Wednesday afternoon is his worst
time, and I generally try to be with him and then he's all right, but I
got stopped to-day. He comes down to my aunt's on Sundays, though he
hates it."

"I believe he would like my uncle, he wouldn't jaw and cant."

"Do as you like. I've never thanked you, except in letters, for seeing
me through that illness."

"How are you now?"

"All right; I feel as if I have been ill, that's all."

"You've got to come down to Worcestershire," I said; "a fortnight there
will do you more good than years of West Ham."

"I can't do that," he answered at once.

We turned into Victoria Station and sat down on a bench. For some
minutes I listened to his objections and answered them; in all my life
I do not think I have ever been quite so sorry for any one, though I
had sense enough not to tell him so. I felt rather a brute when I left
him; it seemed to me that I had been having a most splendid time
without knowing it, while he had been having a very wretched one, but I
can't keep on feeling a brute long enough for it to do me any good, if
feeling a brute ever does any good.

I overcame all Owen's objections, and I made him promise to come to
Worcestershire, but as soon as I had time to think about it I wondered
what on earth I should do with him when I had got him. I could count
on my mother as an ally. I did not altogether know what my father
would think, and Nina, as far as I was concerned, was represented by x
in a problem to which no one had ever found an answer which was
a