"Let me punch up your pillow for you, dear," said Cyril, bending over the couch, and raising the slight frame of the sick woman, whose arms closed softly round the young man's neck, while he beat and turned the soft down pillow, lowering the invalid gently back into her former place, and kissing her tenderly upon the brow. "That's better," he said. "I hate a hot pillow, and it's so comfortable when it's turned." Mrs Mallow clung fondly to her son for a few moments, smiling gratefully in his face; and the Rector sighed and again bit his lip as he saw how moment by moment his task was growing more difficult. "If he would only study her feelings in the broader things of life," he said to himself; and he took a turn or two impatiently about the room. "Now, governor, I'm ready," said Cyril, facing round suddenly, his mother holding his hand between hers. "What's the last thing I've done amiss?" "Heaven knows," cried the Rector, startling his wife by the way in which he suddenly flashed into anger. "The last thing that I have to complain of is that I cannot trust my own son." "Ah, you mean with money, father," said the young man, lightly. "Well, it does go rather fast." "I mean my son's word," said the Rector, quickly. "Cyril, last night you told me a lie." "Oh, no, no, no," cried the mother, quickly. "It is some mistake, dear. Cyril would not tell you what was not true." The Rector, after years of patience, was so thoroughly out of temper with the discovery of that day that he retorted hotly-- "A lie--I say he told me a deliberate lie." "Nonsense!" said the young man. "People tell lies when they are afraid to tell the truth. I'm not afraid to tell you anything." "You told me last night, sir, that you had been down in the town with Frank, whereas I find this morning that you had been at Kilby Farm." "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Cyril. "Why, what a discovery, father. You asked me where I had been, and I told you--`down the town.' So I had. You did not ask me whether I had been anywhere else, or I might have added, to the Churchwarden's." "And pray why did you go there, sir?" cried the Rector. "Come, father, don't talk to me as if I were a naughty little boy about to be sent to bed without his supper." "Pray be calm, dear," cried Mrs Mallow. "Cyril gives a very good explanation. Surely it was natural that he should walk over to Kilby." "I say why did you go over there, sir?" "To smoke a pipe with old Portlock, if you must know, and have a glass of his home brewed ale. It's dull enough here with the girls." "It is false, sir," cried the Rector, excitedly. "Well," said Cyril, coolly, "you may not find it dull, but I do." "I say, sir, it is false that you merely went there to drink and smoke." "Very well, father," said Cyril, in the most nonchalant way, as he lay back in his chair and played with his mother's rings. "Perhaps you know, then, why I went."