"Then," I said, "you repudiate all responsibility to your own flesh and blood? Whether I live or die, this is a request I shall never repeat." "Oh, we'll see how things go," he answered. "You may not be as bad as you think. If I find Will starving at the end of the war, I'd undertake to pay his passage to Australia and give him a hundred a year to stay there..." Until you know my brother-in-law, you cannot appreciate the _refinement_ of his humour.... "Let us," I said, "discuss this no further." You have probably observed that a man is never content with being _thoroughly_ ungenerous; he must always try to justify himself. "You know," he began, very importantly, "you wouldn't have half so much trouble with that fellow, if you'd licked him a bit more when he was younger..." This from _Spenworth_! "Who," I asked, "who made thee a ruler and a judge?" And then, truly honestly, I had to beg him to leave me in order that I might compose myself.... Compose myself! To shew you how unnerved I had become, I wrote down something which I had never _breathed_ to Arthur or Will. We have always been so poor that I had dreaded an emergency, a sudden illness, for which I should be unable to provide. In Mount Street we are positive _Spartans_! Well, from the day of Will's birth I have pinched and scraped, scraped and pinched, _trying_ to put something by... A little nest-egg... Thirty years--nearly. I have never dared invest it, in case _something_ happened. It lies at the bank--in a separate account--ready at a moment's notice. When I was so ill four years ago, did I touch it? But before my operation--in case anything happened--I told Will the _amount_ and how I had arranged for him to be able to draw on it. What I tell _you_ is told to the grave; I have torn up the letter; they _still_ do not know; but, when I _saw_ the amount, I was truly tempted to say "Well done, thou good and faithful servant" ... I have lost the thread.... Ah, yes! I was saying that my nerve had entirely _gone_... I was so much exhausted that I fell into some kind of trance. Goodness knows the thousand and one things that go to make up a dream... Opposites... All that sort of thing... I dreamt most wonderfully about Will and--I wonder if you can guess? Phyllida! They have been brought up together--cousins! She is young, high-spirited, very, _very_ attractive; and, thanks to Brackenbury's marriage, she is well-dowered... I said to myself in the dream "If she could marry happily some one in her own station..." And then I seemed to see her with Will... It was but a phantasy. I should do nothing to encourage it, I am not at all sure that I even approve... Alas for reality! Phyllida came and bullied me for my "interference." ... But I told you about that. And, the day before the operation, Arthur asked whether I really thought it was necessary. Like that! At the eleventh hour! "I don't trust these surgeons," he said. "They _make_ operations."