I had not been at home in June for years, and June is the month in which to see my mother's garden. Everything went swimmingly for a day or two; Fred made a lot of runs against Sussex, and Henderson--whose blue was very uncertain--made seventy-six. I was enormously pleased, and suggested at dinner that we should all go up to town to see Fred play in the 'Varsity match. My father and mother were rather delighted with the idea, and said they would go if Nina cared to come with us. "It's the middle of the season," I said promptly, for I suppose I was getting artful. "I would rather not go," Nina said decidedly, "but do take Godfrey up with you." "I shan't leave you here by yourself," my mother answered. "It's a pity Miss Read has gone," I put in, and Nina looked very savagely across the table at me. "You had better go up by yourself," my father said. "Don't you want to see Fred playing in his first 'Varsity match--you came up in December to see me play?" I asked Nina. But she simply went on eating her fish as if I had not spoken, and I wished again that Miss Read had not left us. CHAPTER XVII THE PROFESSOR AND HIS SON There is not much room for a feud in a small family, and, thank goodness, I did not belong to a large one. Collier had five brothers and four sisters, some of whom were never on speaking terms with the others except at Christmas or a birthday when, from habit, they declared a truce. "The truce is no good," Collier said to me when he told me about it, "because the only thing which happens is that they change sides. I believe they pick up." "What happens to you?" I asked. "Oh, I'm neutral, a sort of referee, and have a worse time than anybody," he replied, and I was glad that fate had not decreed that I should be born into the Collier family. I am sure that had I been able to find any one else to talk to, I should have left Nina alone after she had refused to go to the 'Varsity match. It would have been a great effort, but I thought that Nina was going out of her way to be particularly horrid, and she liked talking as much as I did. Silence, an air of offended dignity, the sort of not-angry-but-very-sorry business, would have been a heavy punishment for her if I could only have inflicted it, but when my father and mother were engaged there was often nobody, except Nina, to ask to do anything. So after wasting one beautiful afternoon I decided that the best thing I could do was to come to a plain understanding with her.