Rupert was cynical about it. “It’s like getting engaged to a barmaid in the full and certain knowledge that you can’t buy her off,” he said and that “Barmaid” indicated what he secretly thought of the show-mills of Lancashire. But he was not proposing resistance; he was going into this with open eyes; he knew what had happened to that recreant Hepplestall who, so to speak, had broken his vows--the man who bolted, last heard of as a hanger-on in a gambling hell in Dawson City, “combined,” the informant had said, “with opium.” It wasn’t for Rupert. He knew on which side his bread was buttered. But “Damn the hors d’ouvres,” he said. “Damn to-day.” Then, “Pull yourself together. Won’t do to look peevish. Come, be a little prince.” He composed in front of the mirror a compromise between boyish eagerness and an overwhelming sense of a dignified occasion, surveyed his reflection and decided that he was hitting off very neatly the combination of aspects which his father would expect. Then he jeered at his efforts and the jeer degenerated into an agitated giggle: he was uncomfortably nervous; “This prince business wants getting used to,” he said, recapturing his calculated expression and going downstairs to the breakfast room. Only his father and mother were there. To-night there would be a dinner attended by such uncles as were not abroad in the service of the firm, but for the present he was spared numbers and it seemed a very ordinary birthday when his mother kissed him with good wishes and his father shook his hand and left a ten pound note in it. He expected an oration from his father, but what Sir Philip said was “Tyldesley’s not out, Rupert. 143. Would you like to go to Old Trafford after lunch?” “To-day!” he gasped. Could normal things like cricket co-exist with his ordeal? “Yes, I think I can spare the time this afternoon,” and so on, to a discussion of Lancashire’s chances of being the champion county--anything to put the boy at his ease. Sir Philip had been through that ordeal himself. He talked cricket informally, but what he was thinking was “Shall I tell him he’s forgotten to put a tie on or shall I take him round the place without?” But he could hardly introduce a tie-less heir to the departmental managers, who, if they were employees had salaries running up to fifteen hundred a year, with bonus, and were, quite a surprising number of them, magistrates. So he proceeded to let the boy down gently. “Heredity’s a queer thing,” he said. “It’s natural to think of it to-day, and I shall have some instances to tell you of later, when we get down to the office. But what sets me on it now is that precisely the same accident happened to me on my sixteenth birthday as has happened to you. I forgot my tie.” “Oh, Lord!” Rupert was aghast, feeling with twitching fingers for the tie that wasn’t there. “I take it as a happy omen that you should have done the same.” “You really did forget yours, dad?” “Really,” lied Sir Philip.