"Made you over—that’s all." "Explain," I said, gazing at him stupidly. "What is there to explain?" growled Dibdin, when the waiter was out of earshot. "You were always a decent sort of idiot—bookworm, muddler, dilettante, whatever it was—afraid of real life, fit only to collect pretty little books or old musty volumes that nobody really cares to read in—a drifter, with about as much knowledge of the problems of existence as a stuffed owl in a glass. "What happened? Your sister’s orphans come to you. You plunge into life, go into business which you detest, lose your money, go to work as a clerk, by George! You of all people!—Keep a roof over them, bring them up and hang me if I don’t think you were idiotically happy in it all until I brought this Old Man of the Sea!—What right had I to pick him up and bring him and bungle it all? And why the hell didn’t you warn me not to fetch him? I thought I was helping you out. I’d sooner have chucked the brute overboard—I would, by Heaven!" For a moment I could reply nothing at all to Dibdin. His estimate and account of my actions were natural enough to him who, despite his burly manner, exaggerates everybody’s qualities. It seemed the more remarkable that he who so firmly believed in the second chance should now find no word to say in Pendleton’s favor. But I could see clearly enough that what troubled him was the pain he instinctively realized the departure of the children from me to Pendleton was certain to bring me. "Why didn’t you cable me, ’Lose the brute?’" he took up his argument. "Because, my dear fellow," I put my hand on his arm across the table, "it was too late; once you had found him and told him of what had occurred in his absence, it was too late. Would you like to live with the menacing uncertainty of him overhanging in space? Rather have him here and face him. Besides, the children are his"—I knew I must state my view squarely on that head—"If he is fit to take them, then have them he must, regardless." "Regardless of you, you mean?" He put it darkly. "Yes—regardless of me, certainly. I don’t count." "By the Lord!" and his fine head shot upwards in a gesture that was in itself invigorating. "D’you know you are twenty times the man you were?" he cried. "I couldn’t have believed it. You—you’re stupendous!" I laughed and waved him away with a "_Retro, Satanas_." "You’re going it blind like that," he ran on, disregarding me,—"Salmon and Byrd," with a laugh—"losing all your money and then—Visconti’s—slaving for the kids—meeting it all—by gad, you are living life!—heroic, I call it—I take off my hat to you!"