"Oh dear, yes! It was not a bad affair after all. He was able to go back to school fairly soon, and his ankle seems quite strong now," I answered, as I helped myself to a biscuit. "Was it your brother Moore?" Rupert inquired, and by his tone I perceived that he was not altogether pleased at this unexpected discovery of his senior's previous acquaintance with me. "Yes," I answered. "Did _your_ brother--the one at school with him, I mean--never mention the accident?" "I think not," said Rupert, at once responding to my little overture. "I should have been sure to remember it, though perhaps it was before Leo's going to Minchester." "Of course it was," I replied. "I was forgetting how time goes. That is a sign of getting old, isn't it?" I added lightly, though in point of fact I was not sorry to hear of Moore's reticence as to the adventure which, except for his agreement with me, he would doubtless have found a highly spiced experience to relate and be listened to by his companions. "I don't know," said Rupert rather gloomily. "We are all getting very old, I suppose. I often feel as if I were ninety, and I don't think I should much care if I were. Life is not so very entrancing, that I can see." His brother glanced at him half-mischievously. "Speak for yourself, if you please, my dear boy," he said. "Miss Fitzmaurice does not feel very antique and decrepit, I am quite sure. Nor do I. _I_ think life `grows upon one,' and becomes more and more interesting every new year one has of it." "So do I," I exclaimed eagerly. "I used to dread getting big--I mean leaving off being a child"--and I felt that I blushed a little, as if I were talking egotistically--"but I think being grown-up is very nice after all." "Yet there are plenty of sad things too," said Clarence gently. "Sometimes one feels as if it were scarcely fair that one should have so much and others so terribly little," and I _fancied_ he sighed a little. "Dear Clarence," said his mother, "that is so like you," and she patted his head. He was a very good son. I _felt_ that her remarks and manner irritated him a little, but he never showed it, so as to chill or hurt her in the least. "He is so deeply interested in the poor," she continued, turning to me, "and in all the wonderful plans on foot now-a-days for improving their condition." At this it seemed to me that Clarence Payne got rather red.