Who was she? and how had he managed it? were the questions I asked myself at the time. Somehow or other, I couldn’t imagine Ronald proposing to his lady-love in a conventional, Christianlike way. True, time had sobered him considerably. He was now a handsome young fellow, living quietly and sedately with his uncle at Broadwater; not easy to recognise as the lad who had discomfited an itinerant preacher, and played the stable-boy on the race-course at Bayview. But the spirit of Bohemianism dies hard, and I was possessed with the idea that, even in the act of “placing himself” for life, Ronald would make opportunity for a final fling. He was having a really bad time of it with his uncle, and, in spite of occasional outbursts, when the Viking blood got the better of him, had been fairly amenable to discipline. The old man, I know, must have been a constant thorn in his flesh; very selfish, and very dogmatic on all points, especially politics. If he could have reasoned logically himself, or have listened to reason in others, he would have been less objectionable. But he formed his opinions on grounds as strictly illogical as does the average woman, and, to do him justice, never abandoned them. For example: “What a grand speech that was of Gladstone’s yesterday, Ronald!” “Do you think so, sir? It seemed a trifle commonplace to me in comparison with Dizzy’s reply.” “Pshaw! Dizzy’s no speaker at all compared with him.” “Did you ever hear him, sir?” “Never—and don’t want to.” “Then you have read his speeches, sir?” “Never—and I hope I never may.” This was his recognised line of argument (Heaven save the mark!) on all topics. Yet to differ from any of his conclusions was a most serious offence, which Ronald in time learned how to avoid. His own part in a conversation became limited to a series of characterless phrases—“Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” “Of course, sir”—which passed muster as entirely satisfactory. Occasionally, it is true, they were flavoured with a salt of sarcasm, but as this only rebounded harmlessly, without piercing his uncle’s pachydermatous hide, the peace was seldom broken between them. Outsiders were less merciful. “Growing a trifle dogmatical is Heyward, isn’t he?”—one club member would say to another—when a theory, accepted obediently by my uncle’s household, had been thrust a little prematurely down a stranger’s throat. “But there: he’s getting on in years—sixty, I should say, if he’s a day—and we shall all of us like our own way then. Indeed, youngsters like it too, as a Master of Trinity found with his junior Fellows. ‘Not one of us is infallible,’ he said to them, ‘not even the youngest.’”