“A young lady brought me down from the house,” he said, and could say no more. “Hullo, Dick!” he added presently, and immediately turned, tiptoed to the door, looked out, and came back. “She’s gone away,” he said--“_such_ a beauty, Dick! She told me you’d taken to living in a hermitage, and offered to show me the way.” “O!” I said. “It was Miss Christmas, I suppose. She’s a ward of Lord Skene’s. But don’t bother about her. Come and tell me about yourself.” I got him to the fire, filled him a pipe, and put a light to it for him. As he pulled, letting it out every two minutes, he kept chuckling, like one immensely tickled over something. “O, I’m nothing!” he said, bursting suddenly into a laugh, and snuggling his head into his shoulders and his hands between his knees. “I’m only ‘Grafto,’ you know--how much for the hair of the dog that bit you, eh, Dick? It’s just delightful to see you again; and you’re not a bit altered either, only for that scrub of yellow on your lip! Rub-a-dub-dub, eh?” The joy in his face moderated an instant. “_I_ can’t grow one,” he said. “It all comes out in perspiration.” “Never mind, Johnny,” I said. “You’ve got other compensations, haven’t you?” “Well,” he answered, “I’ve got money enough to ‘corner’ all the moustaches in London, if that’s what you mean. But what’s the good, when I can’t grow one of my own?” He squeaked over the admission; then relit his pipe joyously. “And what have _you_ been doing with yourself all this time?” he said. “We’ll come to that,” I answered. “I want to hear about you first.” “About me!” he said, surprised. “O! there’s nothing to tell. Daddy made it all right for me, you know. He was ‘Grafto’--you remember that? _What_ a man he was, to be sure--_old_ daddy! His ‘Grafto’ would put a hair-spring into a watch, they used to say. He was a Government analyst when he invented it; and afterwards he became a person. I never knew, Dick, until he died, that he’d worn a wig himself for years.” He looked at me tragically. “Wasn’t that awful? And I inherited ‘Grafto’!” “How did you like Oxford?” I said. “O, bully!” he answered. “But I wasn’t there long. There was the estate to take up, you see; and mamma wanted me. She’s the only woman who ever did.” “O! I can’t believe that.” “Can’t you? I don’t know what keeps me laughing so. O, the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells! Hullo, Dick! I say, ain’t you fond of poetry?” “Just.” “So am I; especially Christmas carols, they’re so comforting. Look here, why did you never answer any of my letters?” “What letters? I’ve never had a line from you that I know!” “Not? Good Lord! I remember now we had a beastly Swiss courier, a rascal who tapped our correspondence, and put us to no end of shifts. It must have been he.” “Very likely. So you called for me at the house?”