"He says," replied Philip, getting rapidly into his stride over long-familiar ground, "that women are the disturbing and distracting force in Nature. They stray deliberately out of their own appointed sphere in order to interfere with and weaken the driving-force of the world--Man. They are a parry--parry--parry-sitic growth, sapping the life out of the strongest tree. They are subject to no standard laws, and therefore upset the natural balance of Creation. They act from reason and not instinct--no, I think it is the other way round--they act from instinct and not from reason. They have no breadth of view or sense of proportion. They argue from the particular to the general; and in all argument they habitually beg the question and shift their ground if worsted. They cannot organise or direct; they only scheme and plot. Their own overpowering instinct is the Prebby--Presbyterian instinct--the instinct of plunder--to obtain from Man the wherewithal to deck their own persons with extravagant and insanitary finery. This they do, not to gratify man, but to mortify one another. A man who would perform his life's work untravelled--no, untrammelled--must avoid women at all costs. At least," concluded Philip traitorously, "that is what Uncle Joseph says." Miss Falconer puckered her small brow. Evidently she declined to go all the way with Uncle Joseph in his views. "I don't understand it all," she said frankly, "but some of it sounds pretty silly. Is your Uncle Joseph a nice man? Do you like him?" "Yes," said Philip stoutly. "He is very kind to me." "He sounds a funny man," mused Peggy. "I shall talk to Mother about him. I must go now. It is getting dark." She slipped off the gate, and Philip perceived, for the first time, that for all her youthfulness she was half a head taller than himself. "Where do you live?" enquired Philip, forgetting his previous intentions. "Over there, where the lamp-posts are. Goodnight, Phil!" "Good night, Pegs!" The children shook hands gravely. Both desired most ardently to ask the same question; but Philip was restrained by his principles (now returning hurriedly to duty), and Miss Peggy by maidenly reserve. But each secretly made the same resolution at the same moment. II Philip found his uncle smoking a pipe in a big armchair before the study fire. He was jotting down calculations on a blotting-pad. "The opposite sex has its uses, Philip," he said. "To-day, thanks to the sentimental credulity of a number of estimable but credulous females, we have raked in forty-seven pounds ten. With that sum we shall be able to do some real good." "How are you going to spend it this week, Uncle Joseph?" asked Philip.