"They was," he admitted reluctantly. "She as't me, careless-like, if you didn't drink wine with your meals, and I said yes. I'd ought to have said no." "What!" cried my brother, smiting the table till the decanter and glasses reeled. "You think that you ought to have lied on our account. Jasperson--I'm ashamed of you; I tremble for your future as the slave of Miss Dutton." "Wal--I didn't lie," said Jasperson defiantly; "I up and told her the truth: that you had beer for supper, and claret wine, or mebbe sherry wine, or mebbe both for dinner, and that you took a toddy when you felt like it, an' that there was champagne down cellar, an' foreign liquors in queer bottles, an' Scotch whisky, an'--_everything_. She as't questions and I answered them--like an idiot! Gen'lemen, the shame you feel for me is discounted by the shame I feel for myself. I'd ought to have told Birdie that your affairs didn't concern her; I'd ought to have said that you was honnerable gen'lemen whom I'm proud to call my intimate friends; I'd ought to have said a thousand things, but I sot there, and said-nothin'!" He was standing as he spoke, emphasising his periods with semaphoric motions of his right arm. When he had finished he sank quite overcome upon the big divan, and covered his flushed face with a pair of small hands. He was profoundly moved, and Ajax appeared less solidly complacent than usual. I reflected, not without satisfaction, that I had done what I could to keep Jasperson and the Grand Secretary apart. "This is very serious," said Ajax, after a significant pause. "I--I feel, Jasperson, that this engagement was brought about by--me." "It's a fact," assented our hired man. "And that's what makes me feel so mean right now. Boys, I love that woman so that I dassn't go agin her." Ajax rose in his might and confronted the trembling figure upon the divan. My brother's nickname was given to him at school in virtue of his great size and strength. Standing now above Jasperson, his proportions seemed even larger than usual. The little dandy in his smug black garments with his diamond stud gleaming in the ivy-bosomed shirt (his rings had been given to Miss Birdie), with his features wilting like the wild pansies in the lapel of his coat, dwindled to an amorphous streak beneath the keen glance of my burly brother. "Do you really love her?" said Ajax, in his deepest bass. "Or do you _fear_ her, Jasperson? Answer honestly." The small man writhed. "I dun'no'," he faltered at last. "By golly! I dun'no'."