“Upon my word, that’s a new way of looking at it,” he said. “Makes it seem as if it will be positively good for me.” “Of course it will,” said Colin. “That’s the whole system of modern physics. If you think anything is good for you, it does you good.” Ronald clapped his loose lips to the glass, and smacked them. “Nectar!” he said. “You miss a lot, Colin, by not joining me. But not a word to your Aunt Margaret, mind--I should get a scolding if she knew I had had more than one glass.” “No, I won’t tell her,” said Colin. “We’ll see if she discovers it without being told.” Ronald, twiddling the stem of his wine-glass, faintly wondered what Colin meant. Certainly it was a wonderful bottle of port that had been brought him, and it did not matter much what Colin meant. He emptied his glass and with an absent air refilled it again. “Much going on in town?” he asked. “Dances? Dinners? Ah, when I was a young fellow I don’t suppose I dined at home once in a month, nor got back there till three or four in the morning.” Colin found his fingers twitching with sudden dislike of this buckish old wine-bibber. Why, after all, did he let him and his thin-lipped scarecrow wife feed and board themselves here? Her return for her keep was to write out the menu-cards, his to consume, as fast as was reasonable to expect of any one man, all the best bins. True, it was a custom in great houses at one time to keep a professional fool on the premises for entertainment, but when he became a bore, you sent him down to the scullery, or wherever he lived. He must really consider the question of conveying to Uncle Ronald and his wife that their visit had been rather a long one, for they had lived here since before Violet’s birth. He might begin now. “Oh, it’s been quite lively,” he said. “And I daresay you’ll have a gay autumn. I suppose you and Aunt Margaret will settle down in London when you get back from Aix.” Ronald finished his glass in rather a hurry. “Bless me, no,” he said, “there’s no thought of that. My London gaieties are over, but for a week or two occasionally, and naturally I couldn’t think of leaving your grandmother.” Again Colin’s fingers twitched with dislike. Why should he at this moment be sitting here with this boring old man with his tremulous hand and his plastered hair, who couldn’t think of ever leaving Stanier? He might be assisted to think of it.... “Couldn’t you indeed?” he said. “Why, of course, that settles it, doesn’t it? Let me fill your glass for you.” Ronald made a clumsy feint of putting his hand over the bowl. “No, upon my word, not a drop more,” he said. Colin inserted the lip of the decanter between his glass and the covering hand, and filled it up again. “Of course that settles it,” he repeated.