"I hope you have always remembered to wear flannel next your skin, Henry?" his mother ventured to ask, in the hilarious moment which her husband was enjoying as the meed of his merry thought. "Oh, I'm all right, mother! Don't worry about me. Wear flannel next the skin, drink cod-liver oil like water, and am never without a chest-protector on the hottest day." His sisters laughed, but doubted their ears. Henry had never been jocular. Evidently the neat cut of his summer suit, the elegant tie, were not the only things Laysford had endowed him with. "Your mother always was coddling you up as a boy. She forgets that you're a man now. Why, your moustache is big enough for a Frenchie. Don't it get into the tea? I never could abide a moustache. It's one of they furrin ideas." "My moustache is rather admired, dad," said Henry brightly, glancing slily at his sisters. "Hark at the lad.... By whom?" "Ladies ... perhaps!" Oh, Henry, you might have broken it more gently! Edward John smiled and called him "a young dog"; his mother's face clouded for a moment, and brightened; the girls understood--at least Dora, who was nineteen, and Kit, who was two years younger, understood--and laughed. Milly was only a maiden of bashful fifteen. "It's simply wonnerful, 'Enry, how you've smartened up since you were 'ome two years ago. Your second two years have done more for you than the first," said Edward John, buttering his bread at the tea-table. "Glad you think so, dad. But I say, mother, it's funny to be buttering my own bread again; I haven't buttered any since I was at home last." "When I was in London I never buttered a bit. All done for you. Wonnerful how they encourage laziness in the city." Edward John had need to remind them that he had been to London; for Henry had actually spent two summer holidays there instead of coming to Hampton, and the glory of his father's visit was in danger of being tarnished. "Still thinking o' going to London some day for good, I suppose?" he went on. "Oh, of course; but the fact is that the more I learn of journalism the more difficult London seems. It is all plain sailing at eighteen; but at twenty-two ... well, I'm just beginning to think I'm not a heaven-born genius, dad." "But it ain't what you think about yourself that matters." "That's just what does matter--in journalism. I've learned one great thing since leaving home. The world takes a man pretty much at his own valuation. A fool who takes himself seriously is like to be taken seriously by other fools, and you know how many fools there are in England according to Carlyle." "Well, then, if you are a fool, try it," retorted the postmaster merrily. "But a wise man, who thinks himself a fool, is likely to be thought a fool by--" "Wise men?" "Perhaps by them also; but certainly by the fools, who are in the majority." "Nonsense, my lad! Was it for this I paid that Springthorpe fellow five-and-twenty pounds?"