Scipio reconsiders, and takes exception to his own speech, with the air of a person drawing on a reserve of veracity, a higher candour: "Perhaps I have overstated the case. We played picquet all the way from Euston. Picquet, as you are aware, involves an occasional interchange of monosyllables...." "I know. One for his heels and two for his nob. Go on." "Excuse me. Allow me to correct a misapprehension. The expressions you have quoted belong to another game--cribbage." "Does it matter? Do go on with what you were saying ... 'involves an occasional interchange of monosyllables'...." The young lady is a little impatient, and taps. "Which can scarcely be regarded as conversation." He completes the sentence with deliberation. He seems to take a pleasure in doing so, simply because of her impatience. "But with the exception of allusions to the game, I can recall no remark or observation whatever, wise or otherwise." Whereupon the young lady, seeming to give him up as hopeless, calls to her brother in an adjoining room: "Will!" and he replies: "What? Anything wanted?" "Yes!--come and make Lord Felixthorpe reasonable." From which it is clear that Scipio is a lord, or has a right to be called one. He is somebody's son, supposably. This conversation is taking place in the drawing-room at Royd, where the two young men arrived just in time to delay dinner half-an-hour, that they might have time to dress. At Royd, undue hurry about anything was unknown, and Mr. Schott had arranged young Mr. Arkroyd's shirt-studs in his shirt, black silk stockings, coat, waistcoat, and trousers in a most beautiful pattern on his bed almost before his apologies to his mother were over for giving the wrong time of his train. He ought to have arrived an hour sooner, and Bullett and the dog-cart--or, rather, its mare--had been kicking their heels all that time at Furnival Station, enjoying the great luxury of enforced idleness, with a grievance against its cause. However, it was all right by now, and everyone who had not eaten too many macaroons at tea had dined extremely well. "Smoke a cigarette," said William Rufus to his sister, as he settled down on the split fauteuil. "Never mind Sibyl!" She disclaimed Sibyl's influence, and lighted the cigarette he gave her at his own. He continued: "_I_ can't make Scip reasonable. Nobody can." "He says you and he never exchanged a word, and that you played cribbage in the train all the way without speaking." "It was picquet. I don't know cribbage." "Oh dear!--how trying you boys are! As if that mattered! The _point_ is, did you speak, or didn't you?" Whereupon each of the young men looked at the other, and said: "Did we speak, or didn't we?" "I can wait," said the young lady; and waited with a passiveness that had all the force of activity. "I understand"--thus Scipio, more deliberately than ever--"that technical remarks relating to the game are excluded by hypothesis." "Yes!" from the catechist.