"I think it ought if it's any good," said Dick after a pause, during which he had been watching his father attentively. "Do you?" said Mr Temple coldly; and he went on calcining a piece of the soft white stone, and then placing it in a mortar to grind it up fine. This done, he took the powder out and spread it upon a small glass slab, where he applied a few drops of water to it, and mixed and mixed till he had formed the white powder into a paste that looked like white clay. "I say, father," said Dick. "Yes." "Will would like to see what you are doing with that stuff. May I tell him?" "No," said Mr Temple, quietly kneading the white paste in his fingers and then examining it with a powerful lens. "I desire that you say no word about anything that you may see me doing. This is private work that to-day unknown to anyone else may be very valuable. Known to all the world, it might prove to be not very valuable, but absolutely worthless. Wait, my boy, and see." Waiting was always an unpleasant task for Dick Temple. Time never ran half fast enough for him, and to have to wait in what he called, after some one whom he had heard make use of the term, a state of mental anxiety, was something hard to be borne. Arthur calmly took a book, after glancing in the glass to see if his collar was quite right and his hair properly brushed. He could sit and read in the most placid manner; but Dick seemed to have quicksilver in his toes and fingers. He could not keep still, but was always on the fret to be doing something. In his eagerness to help he got into trouble three times with his father, his aid being given invariably at the wrong time, and generally resulting in his knocking over some bottle, disturbing a test, or breaking some delicate piece of apparatus. "I'm very sorry, father, I am indeed," he would say. "Nobody doubts your sorrow, Dick," cried Mr Temple; "but what I want is less sorrow and more care. You blunder on at everything instead of making a bit of a calculation first so as to see what you are about to do." "Well, I will, father, I will really. I'll always in future be as careful as--careful as--careful as Taff." Dick had been looking round the room for an example of care, and this suggested itself. Mr Temple smiled, and bent down over his minerals so that his boys should not see his face, as he noticed Arthur's ears turn red and a nervous twitch go through him preparatory to his looking up from his book. "No," said Mr Temple, "I do not wish you to be as careful as Arthur, my boy, or to take anyone else for a model. Be just your own natural self, and do your best to run straight on your journey through life. Don't try to run like others run; it may not always be in a good style." Arthur's eyes fell upon his book once more, and his ears became of a very deep crimson as he felt injured and touched in his dignity.