"Well," he answered. "Of course, we don't know her very well, but we do know him. And I should say that the woman doesn't live who could shift him from what he proposed to do. You may not see it in the same way, but it is plain enough. His brother," went on my friend with a laugh, "hasn't all the devil in the family, and don't you think it." And we came up to the door and sat down in the porch to take off our boots. I confess this view was to me entirely novel. I felt chagrined that I had been so lacking in intelligence as to miss so obvious a possibility. I had a faint, uneasy suspicion that my friend was laughing at me. But the idea was so pregnant with interest that I soon forgot my mortification. Before I had got my boots completely off I was away on a tour of this new and fascinating region. I leaned back in my chair and gazed pensively towards the faint glare of New York City. It was true, I reflected, that we had at the very first postulated a certain friction between our neighbour and his wife. But then we had not listened to the love story of our neighbour and his wife. I thought, as I sat there, that I saw the point I had missed. Mr. Carville, supposing he had what my friend called the devil in the family, would not exploit it while telling us the story of his life. And so I, who had abandoned myself to the enjoyment of his peculiar mentality, had forgotten that he might have, all the time, some of the "devil" after all, that he might, in short, be difficult to live with. I hesitated to use the word "faults." Mr. Carville himself had seemed to imply that the ordinary matrimonial disagreements were as inevitable and as fundamental as cosmic disturbances. Perhaps they were. "Devil," however, was another matter. "I wonder who's indoors," said Mac, getting up. Thus roused, I heard voices inside, with laughter from Bill. The next moment the door opened and Benvenuto Cellini and Giuseppe Mazzini were discovered behind it. "What, visitors?" said Mac, touching the dimples in their cheeks; and they nodded and looked at each other in a very taking way they had. Bill came in hastily. "They came in this afternoon," she explained, "and asked most solemnly if they might have some tea. Ma was gone to New York, they said, and she might be late." "'That so?" said Mac. "Well, we'll have 'em to dinner as well. What 'say, you chaps? Will you have dinner with us?" Again they nodded and looked at each other, and Ben remarked gravely that they were hungry. We went off to have a wash and a change. They certainly were two pretty little men as they stood there in red jerseys and blue corduroy knickers. My friend's custom of snatching open the piano and heralding dinner with a furious tornado of chords pleased them vastly. "What's that for?" Beppo inquired expectantly. "Chop," said Mac, rumpling their hair. "Pipe all hands to the galley. Here comes the salt horse and the hard tack." "Their father isn't a deck-swab," I remarked mildly.