John, after a brief vision of a canoe being towed across the Atlantic by the _Murmania_, felt that he was being subjected to the lawless exactions of a brigand, but could think of nothing more novel in the way of defiance than: "Go away now and be a good boy." "Can't I ..." Harold began. "No, you can't. If those chickens' feathers...." "They're pigeons' feathers," his nephew corrected him. "If those feathers stuck in your hair are intended to convey an impression that you're a Red Indian chief, go and sit in your wigwam till breakfast and smoke the pipe of peace." "Mother said I wasn't to smoke till I was twenty-one." "Not literally, you young ass. Why, good heavens, in my young days such an allusion to Mayne Reid would have been eagerly taken up by any boy." Something was going wrong with this conversation, John felt, and he added, lamely: "Anyway, go away now." "But, Uncle John, I...." "Don't Uncle John me. I don't feel like an uncle this morning. Suppose I'd been shaving when you started that fool's game. I might have cut my head off." "But, Uncle John, I've left my spectacles on one of the chimneys. Mother said that whenever I was playing a rough game I was to take off my spectacles first." "You'll have to do without your spectacles, that's all. The gardener will get them for you after breakfast. Anyway, a Red Indian chief in spectacles is unnatural." "Well, I'm not a Red Indian any longer." "You can't chop and change like that. You'll have to be a Red Indian now till after breakfast. Don't argue any more, because I'm standing here in bare feet. Go and do some weeding in the garden. You've pulled up all the plants on the roof." "I can't read without my spectacles." "Weed, not read!" "Well, I can't weed, either. I can't do anything without my spectacles." "Then go away and do nothing." Harold shuffled off disconsolately, and John rang for his shaving water. At breakfast Hilda asked anxiously after her son's whereabouts; and John, the last vestige of whose irritation had vanished in the smell of fried bacon and eggs, related the story of the morning's escapade as a good joke. "But he can't see anything without his spectacles," Hilda exclaimed. "Oh, he'll find his way to the breakfast table all right," John prophesied. "These bachelors," murmured Hilda, turning to her mother with a wry little laugh. "Hark! isn't that Harold calling?" "No, no, no, it's the pigeons," John laughed. "They're probably fretting for their feathers." "It's to be hoped," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "that he's not fallen into the well by leaving off his spectacles like this. I never could abide wells. And I hate to think of people leaving things off suddenly. It's always a mistake. I remember little Hughie once left off his woollen vests in May and caught a most terrible cold that wouldn't go away--it simply wouldn't go." "How is Hugh, by the way?" John asked.