"Mr Fordyce," he said, "it's no use _my_ jawing to you, because you can knock me flat at that game; and of course old Moke there"--this was Master Donkin's unhappy but inevitable designation among his friends--"is too thick to argue with a stuffed rabbit; but you had better come down some time and see the place--that's all." Robin promised to suspend judgment pending a personal investigation, and the incident closed. Gerald's verdict on Robin's views, communicated to me privately afterwards, was characteristic but not unfavourable. "He seems to have perfectly putrid notions about some things, but he's a pretty sound chap on the whole--the best secretary you have had, anyhow, old man. Have you seen him do a straight-arm balance on the billiard-table?" But I did not fully realise how completely Robin had settled down as an accepted member of my household until one afternoon towards the end of the Christmas holidays. There is a small but snug apartment opening out of my library, through an arched and curtained doorway. The library is regarded as my workroom--impregnable, inviolable; not to be rudely attempted by devastating housemaids. There is a sort of tacit agreement between Kitty and myself as regards this apartment. Fatima-like, she may do what she pleases with the rest of the house. She may indulge her passion for drawing-room meetings to its fullest extent. She may intertain missionaries in the attics and hold meetings of the Dorcas Society in the basement. She may give reformed burglars the run of the silver-closet, and allow curates and chorus-girls to mingle in sweet companionship on the staircase. But she must leave the library alone, and neither she nor her following must overflow through its double doors during what I call business hours. On this particular afternoon I had been engaged upon the draft of a small bill with which I had been entrusted--we will call it the "Importation of Mad Dogs Bill,"--and about four o'clock I handed it to Robin with instructions to write out a fair copy. Robin retired into his inner chamber, and I sat down in an arm-chair with _Punch_. (It was a Wednesday, the Parliamentary half-holiday of those days, and still, happily, the _Punch_-day of these.) Kitty was holding a Drawing-room Meeting upstairs. I forget what description of body she was entertaining: it was either a Society for the Propagation of something which could never, in the nature of things, come to birth; or else an Association for the Prevention of something that was bound to go on so long as the world endured. I had been mercifully absolved from attending, and my tea had been sent in to me. I was enjoying an excellent caricature of my Chief in the minor cartoon of _Punch_, when I heard the door of the inner room open and the voice of my daughter inquire-- "Are you _drefful_ busy, Uncle Robin?" (My secretary had been elevated to avuncular rank after a probation of just three hours.)