"Poor Frank," she said, "I'm afraid you'll find her much more Gay's ally in the matter than yours. Why don't you put your foot down _yourself_, and insist on Gay's giving up this disreputable business?" The Professor sighed, and Lossie longed to shake him. Fearing that she might be tempted to do so, she got up to go, and she was so tall, and at that moment so beautiful in her contempt, that an unwonted thrill ran through him. After all, he was only a man, and not such a very old one at that, and reading him perfectly, she put up her face to his, and murmuring, "Dear old Frank!" kissed him with rather more than cousinly warmth in farewell. He stood looking at the door through which she had passed with what Gay called his "gay old dog" air of reminiscence; then his thoughts reverted to Minnie, and her good influence over Gay when the latter had been a wilful, charming child, and on the spur of the moment he decided to go and see her. It was lucky that Gay was out. It would never do for her to intercept him, and inquire where he was going, for he had a wholesome dread of his sister's discerning eye. Upon such occasions as he invented "taradiddles" to cover more or less unlawful excursions abroad, he was invariably bowled out, and stood disconsolate, and looking justly sheepish at the emphatic "Rubbish!" with which they were received. "You're a bad liar, Frank," Gay said one day, "and wouldn't deceive a child. But why lie at all? Besides, your memory isn't good enough." Now he hailed a hansom, and darting into it as quickly as a rabbit into its burrow, through the trap-door gave as his destination, the "Trotting Nag," Camberwell, looking, moreover, so guilty and self-conscious, that the cabby smiled broadly as he gathered up the reins, and chirruped to his horse. "Looks more like the British Museum than a 'pub,'" he said to himself, "but, Lord, appearances is such liars!" The Professor squeezed himself into a corner of the cab, and tried to marshal his ideas and line of attack. He did not relish his job, as he had a lively recollection of Min Toplady's temper years ago, before she was married; he hoped that matrimony had softened her downrightness considerably, and also that her husband would be there. He felt he could count on his sympathy, if not on his support, because men always hang together where a woman is concerned. Throughout the long drive he talked nervously to himself, and attracted much attention by his silent rhetoric and expressive gestures. His Jehu passed the wink to such other Jehus as congratulated him on his fare, and having peeped through the roof in the middle of one of the Professor's most impassioned appeals, reassured interested curb-loungers by tapping his head significantly, and turning his eyes heavenwards.