Her one weakness was her adored nephew. As an orphaned infant, left to Miss Letitia a bequest from the dying mother, he had been immediately adopted into the child-hungry heart of the old maid and had held and strengthened his position throughout the years until, at twenty-five, he was the apple of one of her eyes, even as her precious feud was the apple of the other. But hers was no doting, misguided affection. Miss Prall had brought up her nephew, as she did everything else, with wisdom and sound judgment. To her training the young Richard owed many of his most admirable traits and much of his force of character. No man could have more successfully instilled into a boy’s heart the fundamental requisites for true manliness, and only on rare occasions had his aunt’s doting heart triumphed over her wise head in the matter of reproof or punishment. And now, this upstart uncle, as Miss Prall considered him, had come over here from England, with all sorts of plans to take her boy from his chosen and desirable life work and set him to making buns! Buns,—Binney’s Buns! for her gifted inventive genius! This impending disaster together with a new and regrettable development affecting the Feud had thrown Miss Prall into a state of nervous agitation quite foreign to her usual condition of calm superiority. “Masculine management and skill!” she repeated, with a fine scorn; “because not every woman is fitted by nature and circumstances to conduct affairs of importance it does not follow that there are not some feminine spirits with all the force and power of the other sex!” “By gad, madam, that is true,” and Sir Herbert watched the Grenadier as she sat upright in her arm-chair, her fine head erect and her straight shoulders well back. “I apologize for my seeming slight to your quarrelsome abilities, and I concede your will and strength to fight your own battles. In fact, my sympathies are for your antagonist.” “Huh!” and Miss Prall looked at him sharply; for he had been known to express satirical sentiments under guise of suavity. “Don’t waste your solicitude on her! She, too, is able to look out for herself.” “It would seem so, since she has taken part for twenty years in what is still a drawn battle.” “Let up, Oldsters,” laughed young Bates, coming breezily into the room. “You know the main facts of the historic Feud, Uncle Herbert, and, take it from me, sir, no amount of argument or advice on your part will help, or in any way affect it. Aunt Letty will eat up your talk, and then floor you with——” “Floor me! I think not! Binney, of Binney’s Buns, is not of the floorable variety.” “You say that because you haven’t yet really met Auntie Let in the arena. Binney’s Buns would cut no better figure than,—let us say, Crippen’s Cakes.” “Crippen’s Cakes! Do you know Crippen?” “Does she!” and Richard Bates grinned; “why, the Cake Crippen is one of Aunt Letitia’s old beaux,—might have been my uncle, if——” “Hush, Richard!” said the aunt.