interested in the needlework than those who worked at it. Poor little gentleman! Sir Gus did not even care for the newspapers; he looked at the little paragraphs of general interest, but turned with a grimace from the long reports of the debates. “What good does all that do me?” he said, when Lady Markham, who was somewhat horrified by his indifference, endeavoured to rouse him to a sense of his duties. “But it concerns the country,” she would say, “and few people have a greater stake in the country.” “That is how Paul would have felt,” said Sir Gus; “he would have read all these speeches; he would have understood everything that is said. It would have mattered to him----” “Indeed it matters to us all,” said Lady Markham, with grave dignity. Of all people in the world to listen while a parliamentary debate is talked of with contempt, the wife of a man who was once a Cabinet minister is the last--and all the more if her husband held but a secondary place. She was half-offended and half-shocked; but Sir Gus could not see the error of his ways. He got all the picture-papers, which he enjoyed along with Bell and Marie; and sent to the boys after, when they were at school. He cared nothing about the game, except to eat it when it was set before him. From morn to chilly eve he would sit by that fire, and note everything that happened. Not a letter arrived but he was there to see how it was received, and what was in it. Lady Markham declared that had she heard anywhere else, or read in a book, of a man who was always in the drawing-room, who had no duties of his own, and who sat and watched everything, the situation would have seemed intolerable. But it was not so intolerable in reality. They got used, at last, to the big bamboo chair and its inhabitant; they got used to his comments. There was no harm in Mr. Gus; but life was hard upon him. Everybody else was doing something--even the little girls in the school-room were learning their lessons--but he, burying himself in the cushions of his chair, showing nothing out of it but two little brown hands, twirling a paper-knife, or a pencil, or anything else he had got hold of, had nothing to do. Sometimes he would get up and walk to the window. When it was fine it would give him much pleasure to watch the birds collecting about the breadcrumbs, which he insisted on scattering everywhere.