"Philip, my son, you are learning: your education is proceeding apace. But it hurts, and you are puzzled and indignant. But never mind! Hold on, and things will right themselves. Your sense of proportion will come to the rescue and pull you through. I know, old man, I know! I have been through it all. I wasn't always a dull British householder with an expanding waistcoat. I have been young and now I am old--or perhaps middle-aged--and I know! Middle age has its compensations. When we are young, we alternate between periods when we feel that there is nothing on earth that we cannot do and periods when we feel that there is nothing on earth that we can. Advancing years bring us a comfortable knowledge of our own limitations. Though we may not have so many moments of sheer sublimity--moments when we touch the stars--as the young man, we have fewer hours of blackness. So carry on, Philip. Steer by dead reckoning, if necessary: you will get your bearings in time. This experience will do you no harm, provided you face it between the eyes. I know nothing of your little lady friend, but she does not sound to me like a member of the third sex. On the contrary, she appears to be gratifyingly feminine. Her present attitude is probably a pose of the moment. They can't help being made as they are, you know. I fully expect to find my beloved Dumps suffering from the effects of some germ or other when she comes home from abroad next month. That reminds me. In the spring Dumps is to come out--not of gaol, but of the schoolroom, which at eighteen is very much the same thing--for ever. The festivities will include what she calls a Joy-Week in Town. You had better come and stay with us during that period, and join me in contracting dyspepsia. In fact, I have a ukase from my daughter to that effect. Will you come?" Philip assented, listlessly. Joy-Weeks were not for him. II Miss Jean Leslie lived in a roomy flat high up in a tall block of buildings that overlooked the Thames at Chelsea. The larger of the two rooms was her studio. Hither fat, sweet-scented, and rebellious little boys and girls in expensive laces and ribbons were brought by mothers or nurses; and after they had been coaxed into smiles by the arts and blandishments of their hostess,--and for all her spinsterhood she excelled in that accomplishment,--Jean Leslie painted miniatures of them, for which their doting and opulent parents paid fancy prices. "My dear, you must be very rich," observed Peggy one afternoon, inspecting three portraits of cherubic innocents, recently completed and awaiting despatch. Jean Leslie poured out the tea complacently. "Thank you," she said; "I scrape a living. Sit down and eat something. I have some of your favourite Valencia buns." But Peggy seemed restless. She wandered round the little sitting-room, minutely examining photographs and pictures which she already knew by heart.