ve any idea when to stop, it was the
kind of time which made gloomy people cheerful and cheerful people
gloomy; silly, ridiculous things happened, and Mrs. Faulkner was at the
bottom of most of them. She even found a niece for me, but that came
to nothing, for the niece was a very nice girl and in a week we
understood each other beautifully. She stayed a month with the
Faulkners and thought of me as a brother, which was most satisfactory;
sometimes, however, she treated me like one and then I was not so
pleased.

Jack Ward and Nina, in my opinion, behaved none too well; but my father
liked Jack and my mother did not say much about him, which explains the
whole thing. He was always ready to do anything, and his only fault in
my father's eyes was that he was never in time for breakfast.

I was chiefly engaged during his visit in paving the way for Owen's. I
told my mother everything and wanted to tackle my father at once, but
she said I must wait for a favourable opportunity. I waited a whole
week, and it had a most depressing effect on me, so I just walked into
his study at last and got it over. It happened to be a damp day,
during which he had felt two twinges of lumbago, but he forgot those
twinges before he had done with me. I bore everything he said
silently, because when he is in a furious rage in the beginning he
tails off wonderfully at the end. It seemed that he had a very low
opinion of the Professor, and he declared emphatically that he was not
going to have his house made into a sanatorium. I listened to a crowd
of disagreeable facts about my new friend, and my father declared that
even the sight of his son would give him an attack of gout. "It is
true," he said, "that I did save his life, and he had, as far as that
went, cause to be grateful, and he wasn't grateful but a disgrace to
the regiment. I want to forget all about the man and then you rake him
up again, and you say that stupid uncle of yours, who plays cricket
when he ought to be writing sermons, is going to be a friend to him.
It's more than I can or will put up with," and he banged _The
Nineteenth Century_ down on his writing-table so violently that he
upset a vase of roses and some of the water went into his ink-pot.
After that he was incoherent for a minute, and I, not knowing what to
say, remarked that the Bishop could not be expected to write sermons
during his holidays.

"A bishop ought always to be writing sermons," was his only