"Cut his nose open!" repeat I, indistinctly. "How pleased he must have been, and what sort of a nose was it? already hooked? It never _could_ have been the conventional button, _that_ I am sure of; _yours_ was, I dare say, but _his_--_never_. Good Heavens!" (with a sudden change of tone, and disappearance of mirth) "here he is! Come to look for you, no doubt! I--I--think I may go now, may not I?" "Go!" repeats he, looking at me with unfeigned wonder. "Why? It is more likely _you_ that he has missed, _you_, who are no doubt his daily companion." "Not quite daily," I answer, with a fine shake of irony, which, by reason of his small acquaintance with me, is lost on my friend. "Two, you know, is company, and three none. Yes, if you do not mind, I think it must be getting near luncheon-time. I will go." So I disappear through the dry, knotted tussocks of the park grass. CHAPTER IV. "Friends, Romans, and countrymen!" say I, on that same afternoon, strutting into the school-room, with my left hand thrust oratorically into the breast of my frock, and my right loftily waving, "I wish to collect your suffrages on a certain subject. Tell me," sitting down on a hard chair, and suddenly declining into a familiar and colloquial tone, "have you seen any signs of derangement in father lately?" "None more than usual," answers Algy, sarcastically, lifting his pretty, disdainful nose out of his novel. "If, as the Eton Latin Grammar says, _ira_ is a _brevis furor_ you, will agree with me that he is pretty often out of his mind, in fact, a good deal oftener than he is in it." "No, but _really_?" "Of course not. What do you mean?" "Put down all your books!" say I, impressively. "Listen attentively. Bobby, stop see-sawing that chair, it makes me feel deadly sick. Ah! my young friend, _you_ will rue the day when you kept me sitting on the top of that wall--" I break off. "Go on! go on!" in five different voices of impatience. "Well, then, father has sent a message by mother to the effect that _I_ am to dine with them to-night--_I_, if you please--_I!_--you must own" (lengthening my neck as I speak, and throwing up my untidy flax head) "that sweet Nancies are looking up in the world." A silence of stupefaction falls on the assembly. After a pause-- "YOU?" "Yes, _I!_" "And how do you account for it?" "I believe," reply I, simpering, "that our future benefac--, no! I really must give up calling him that, or I shall come out with it to his face, as Bobby did last night. Well, then, Sir Roger asked me why I did not appear yesterday. I suppose he thought that I looked so _very_ grown up, that they must be keeping me in pinafores by force." Algy has risen. He is coming toward me. He has pulled me off my chair. He has taken me by the shoulders, and is turning me round to face the others.