"Lord Nenogh offered me third gun in his shoot in India this cold weather, and I couldn’t resist it. I was getting a bit musty. I’ve been bear-leading those children for eighteen months--ever since dear old Madame died. Lallie and I always hit it off perfectly, but Paddy’s too like me, and gets on my nerves and reminds me that I’m not so young as I was, and I felt I needed a complete change of scene and people, if I am to remain the agreeable fellow I always have been; and I couldn’t take Lallie with me tiger shooting, now could I? We sail from Marseilles in the _Mooltan_ on the 29th; send me a line to the _poste restante_ there, just to tell me that my property has duly reached you--as it should about the 23rd. Till then I shall be flying about all over the place. "Take care of my Lallie. "Yours as ever, "Fitz." The writing was small, close, upright, and distinct. When he had read the letter through Tony examined the envelope and found from its appearance that it had evidently spent a considerable time in somebody’s pocket: either that of the writer or of some untrustworthy messenger. He lit another pipe, and as he watched the fragrant clouds of smoke roll forth and spend themselves about the room, his mind was busy with memories of Fitzroy Clonmell; brilliant, inconsequent, lovable failure. "He wouldn’t have been a failure if his wife had lived," Tony always maintained to those who, remembering Fitz and his early promise of notable achievements, lamented his falling off; his wholesale violation of those youthful pledges. Tony found himself going back to those first years at Oxford, when brilliant Fitz did all he could to push his young schoolfellow among the athletic set, where, reading man as Fitz undoubtedly had been then, his place was quite as assured as in the schools. Tony remembered his shock of surprise when in his first term he went to Clonmell’s rooms in the High, to find them tenanted by a brown-haired, gentle-voiced girl who informed him she was "Mrs. Clonmell"--Alice Clonmell. "Oh, don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt? Sweet Alice, with hair hazel brown"-- Fitz used to sing at a time when the whole world read "Trilby," and make eyes at his wife the while. She was very kind to Tony, and he adored her with the humble dog-like devotion of a rather plain and awkward youth whom ladies usually ignored. He remembered the wrath of the Balliol authorities, and Fitz’s account of his stormy interview with the little Master, and how after much of what Fitz called "fruitless altercation," he wheedled the Master into coming to see Alice. Whereupon that dignitary observed that "there were, perhaps, extenuating circumstances, which must be taken into consideration." By and by there came the twins, who were known as "the Balliol Babies."