"Not entirely," Laurence interposed, gently. "Hugh and I must accept a joint responsibility. The truth is that for some time now I've felt that my work has been terribly at the mercy of little household noises, and Hugh recommended me to build myself an outside study. He has made a very clever design, and has kindly undertaken to supervise its erection. As you have seen, they are already well on with the foundations. The design which I shall show you after breakfast is in keeping with the house, and of course you will have the advantage of what I call my little Gazebo when I leave Ambles. Have I told you that I'm considering a brief experience of the realities of the stage? After all, why not? Shakespeare was an actor." If John had been eating anything more solid than a lightly boiled egg at the moment he must have choked. "You can call it your little Gazebo as much as you like, but it's nothing but a confounded summerhouse," he shouted. "Look here, Johnnie," said Hugh, soothingly. "You'll like it when it's finished. This isn't one of Stevie's Gothic contortions. I admit that to get the full architectural effect there should be a couple of them. You see, I've followed the design of the famous dovecotes at...." "Dovecoats be damned," John exploded. "I instructed you to prepare the house for Christmas; I didn't ask you to build me a new one." "Laurence felt that he was in the way indoors," Edith explained, timidly. "The impression was rather forced upon me," said Laurence with a glance at Hilda, who throughout the dispute had been sitting virtuously silent; nor did she open her thin lips now. "He was going to pay for his hermitage out of the money he ought to have made from writing _Lamp-posts_," Edith went on in a muddled exposition of her husband's motives. "He wasn't thinking of himself at all. But of course if you object to his building this Gas--oh, I am so bad at proper names--he'll understand. Won't you, dear?" "Oh, I shall understand," Laurence admitted with an expression of painfully achieved comprehension. "Though I may fail to see the necessity for such strong language." Frida wiggled in the coils of an endless whisper from which her mother extricated her at last by murmuring: "Hush, darling, Uncle John is a little vexed about something." Hilda and her son still sat in mute self-righteousness; and Grandmama, who always had her breakfast in bed, was not present to defend Hugh. "If it had been anywhere except on the lawn right in front of my room," John began more mildly.