_"My Daddy is a curate. We are very poor, and he has been ill for months. I often hear my mother crying in the night, when she thinks we are all in bed asleep. I have no sister of my own--only a little baby brother. How I wish you were my sister. Then you might help me to earn some money for my father. Shall we pretend to be brother and sister, and then--_ "Hallo, Philip, old man. Getting tired?" Philip had stopped writing. He was gazing dully, fixedly, and rebelliously at the paper before him. His pencil dropped from his fingers. For nearly three years he had been a faithful secretary and a willing amanuensis. He had performed his duties mechanically, without even considering the morality of his conduct or the feelings of his correspondents. Now, suddenly, he hated Uncle Joseph and all his works. "Why?" he wondered. CHAPTER IV HEREDITY I ON Tuesday morning Uncle Joseph went away to the City as usual, and Philip was left to his own devices. Monday had been a heavy day, for all the new appeals had been copied out and sent off. All, that is, except three. Master T. Smith's elaborately ill-spelt epistles required time for their composition, and each, of course, had to be copied out by hand, for it was not to be supposed that the Smiths possessed a typewriter. So when after breakfast Uncle Joseph discovered on the bureau three stamped and addressed envelopes still awaiting enclosures, he directed Philip to indite three further copies of Master T. Smith's celebrated appeal for a little sister, and post them with the others. When Uncle Joseph had gone, Philip set about his task, but with no great zest. As a rule he took a professional pride in his duties, and moreover extracted a certain relish from his uncle's literary audacities. The reader will possibly have noted that at this period of his career Philip's sense of humour was much more highly developed than his sense of right and wrong. But during the past few days something very big had been stirring within him. Some people would have called it the voice of conscience--that bugbear of our otherwise happy childhood. Others would have said with more truth that it was Heredity struggling with Environment. As a matter of fact it was the instinct of Chivalry, which, despite the frantic assurances of a certain section of our sisters that they stand in no need of it, still lingers shyly in the hearts of men--a survival from the days when a woman admitted frankly that her weakness was her strength, and it was a knight's glory and privilege to devote such strength as he possessed to the protection of that weakness.