He spoke in quite another voice. "You silly boy, it was not at all for that. I think you must know I have read what you have published thus far with something more than interest; but I wanted to tell you this in so many words. _Afield_ is not perhaps an impeccable masterwork, if one may be thus brutally frank; but the woman--modeled after discretion will not inquire whom,--is distinctly good. And what, with you only twenty-five, does _A field_ not promise! Child, you have found your metier. Now I shall look forward to the accomplishment of what I have always felt sure that you could do. I am very, very glad. More so than I can say. And I had thought you must know this without my saying it." The man was sincere. And I was very much pleased, and remembered what invaluable help he could give me on my unfinished book, and what fun it would be to go over the manuscript with him. And, in fine, we became again, upon the spot as it were, the very best of friends. 6 It was excellent to have Charteris to talk against. The little man had many tales to tell me of those dissolute gay people we had known and frolicked with; indeed, I think that he was trying to allure me back to the old circles, for he preoccupied his life by scheming to bring about by underhand methods some perfectly unimportant consummation, which very often a plain word would have secured at once. But now he swore he was not "making tea." That had always been a byword between us, by the way, since I applied to him the phrase first used of Alexander Pope--"that he could not make tea without a conspiracy." And it may be that in this case Charteris spoke the truth, and had come to Fairhaven just for the pleasure of seeing me, for certainly he must have had some reason for leaving the Musgraves' house-party so abruptly. "You are very well rid of the Hardresses," he adjudged. "Did I tell you of the male one's exhibition of jealousy last year! I can assure you that the fellow now entertains for me precisely the same affection I have always borne toward cold lamb. It is the real tragedy of my life that Anne is ethically incapable of letting a week pass without partaking of a leg of mutton. She is not particularly fond of it, and indeed I never encountered anybody who was; she has simply been reared with the notion that 'people' always have mutton once a week. What, have you never noticed that with 'people,' to eat mutton once a week is a sort of guarantee of respectability? I do not refer to chops of course, which are not wholly inconsistent with depravity. But the ability to eat mutton in its roasted form, by some odd law of nature, connotes the habit of paying your pew-rent regularly and of changing your flannels on the proper date. However, I was telling you about Jasper Hardress--" And Charteris repeated the story of their imbroglio in such a fashion that it sounded farcical. "But, after all, John, you _did_ make love to her."