“Have some hare, Aunt Em?” said Arthur. “I shot it two days ago.” “Did you kill it at once?” asked Miss Fortescue. “No, I wounded it,” said Arthur, quite regardless of truth. “It screamed.” “Butcher!” said Aunt Em. “Shall I give you some?” repeated Arthur. Miss Fortescue glanced at the menu-card. “Only a very little,” she said. “But where is the proper mean, Miss Fortescue?” resumed Jack. “How can one avoid both being well informed and being ignorant?” “Well-informed people are those who know about the wrong things,” she said. “I and the pearl-oysters, for instance?” Aunt Em groaned. “The Englishman again,” she said. “The Englishman abroad! How well that expresses the Englishman’s attitude toward ideas.” “And the Englishman at home is the Englishman slaughtering innocent beasts, I suppose,” said Arthur. “I’ve only given you a very small piece, Aunt Em.” “Yes, dear, you have taken me at my word,” said Miss Fortescue, inspecting her plate. “That is very English, too. We are the heaviest, most literal nation that ever disgraced this planet.” “Poor planet!” said Jeannie. “How the people in Mars must look down on us.” “And rightly,” sighed Miss Fortescue. “How many Philistines one sees.” “I’m one,” said Arthur, cheerfully. “Philistia, be thou glad of me!” Miss Fortescue shook her head. “Tell me any one you know who is not a Philistine,” said Jack. Miss Fortescue raised her eyes to the ceiling, but Jack did not understand the signal. “Can’t you think of one?” he repeated. “When Aunt Em raises her eyes,” said Jeannie, “we talk of something else. Don’t apologize, Mr. Collingwood; you couldn’t have known.” “A little more hare, Arthur,” said Aunt Em; “about as much as you gave me before.” Frank Bennett, Jack, and Arthur had all been up at Magdalen together, and when the two were left in the smoking-room together Arthur, who only knew vaguely the story, asked Jack about it. “You wrote to me, I remember, after his death in May, and told me about the woman he had lived with. What happened further?” Jack got up. “It is all very terrible,” he said. “The girl died only about ten days ago, in giving birth to a baby. The baby is living. It was about that that I went to see my mother this afternoon.” “What did she suggest?” “An orphanage,” said Jack. “It had been suggested before, and I think it is quite out of the question. The case is not an orphanage case. There is plenty of money. I hoped--no, I hardly hoped--that my mother would suggest that the baby should be brought up in her house, for I owe a great deal to Frank, and as he is dead without my being able to pay it, I owe it to his memory. But she did not suggest it. So I think I shall take the child and bring it up myself.” He paused.