“You have this, though,” I suggested helpfully, as I turned to the rack and took out “_The Storm-Fiend_,” with a look at the Governor meaning, “Don’t dare to say you loathe this thing!” (It was because he did, by the way, that the song had been ordered for him in a burst of unsisterliness by Theo.) “Yes! _You_ can look soft nothings at the girl, my boy!” was Uncle Albert’s interpretation of that glance of the Governor’s as I spoke, “but she’s got to keep those pretty dark eyes of hers for the music!” (—And I wonder the sheet of music didn’t shrivel up under the gaze of the eyes thus praised!) We then proceeded to dash through “_The Storm-Fiend_.” I wondered whether the Governor found in the loud singing of it as much of a safety-valve as I found in the playing of the artillery-like accompaniment! “Bravo! Very good! Stirring song, that!” Uncle Albert’s bellow swelled the echoes of the last chord. “Capital song—very well sung. I like that tune—‘_I chuckle and laugh, ho, ho! I chuckle and laugh, ho, ho!_’” he persisted (to some tune quite of his own). “‘_The Storm-Fiend is the Lord—of—Woe!_’ Very good! Still, not very appropriate for to-night, Billy? Not much Woe about this evening, my dear, eh?” (to me). “Supposing we have a bit of sentiment now. What was that other song, now? I was talking about it only at tea-time here—something tally-ho-ish that we could all join in the chorus of.” But here I felt I simply must nip in the bud a request for the one about— “_All my Fancy dwells upon Nancy._” “Nancy” had had _enough_! So I rose, saying gently, “If you will excuse me, I am rather tired”— This was no fib! —“and I think I will go to bed early. Good night, Mr. Waters,” politely to that awful Uncle Albert. “Good-bye, Major Montresor; so nice to have seen you again like this.... Good-night,” with a little nod to my official _fiancé_. “‘_Be the day weary, be the day long_....’” I thought. But we hadn’t _even yet_ come to the end of it. For Uncle Albert Waters had bounded up again from the deep chair like a large india-rubber ball, with yet another protest to his nephew. “What’s that? what’s that? Ah, but that’ll never do. Never!” reverberated through the den. “You’re never going to let the girl go off like that, Billy?—Just a word and a nod?” Good heavens—what could he mean? “Why! She’d never think anything of you again, lad! Never mind two old has-beens like us. We don’t count, do we, Major? Don’t you take any notice of us. You kiss your sweetheart good night, like a sensible youngster!” And before I could escape, before either of us had fully realized what this terrible, bellowing, stout, red-faced, eyes-on-stalked, cigar-scented, coarse, _horrid_ old man would take it into his head to say or do next, he had literally pushed us into each other’s arms.