"Adrian, old son," he began, in such tones as an orator might address to a refractory mob, "Moke and I are going to have a study next term, and we want some furniture." I mildly remarked that in my day furniture was supplied by the school authorities. "Yes, but I mean pictures and things. Can you give us one? We shall want something to go on that wall opposite the window, shan't we, Moke? The place where young Lee missed your head with the red-ink bottle. _Have_ you got a picture handy, Adrian?" I replied in the negative. Gerald took not the slightest notice. "It will have to be a pretty big one," he continued. "There is a good lot of red ink to cover. I have been taking a look round the house, and I must say the pictures you've got are a fairly mangy lot--aren't they, Moke?" The gentleman addressed coughed deprecatingly, and looked at me as much as to say that, whatever he thought of my taste in art, he had eaten my salt and would refrain from criticism. "There's one that might do, though," continued Gerald. "It's hanging in the billiard-room--a big steamer in a storm." By this time Phillis and Robin had joined the conclave. "I know," said Phillis, nodding her head; "a great beautiful boat in some waves. I should fink it was a friend of the _Great Eastern's_," she added, referring to an antiquated print of the early Victorian leviathan which hung in the nursery. "We could take it for a term or two, anyhow," continued Gerald, "until we get something better. I'm expecting some really decent ones after summer. Ainslie _major_ is leaving then, and he has promised to let me have some of his cheap. Then you can have yours back, Adrian. That's the scheme! Come on, Moke, we'll go and take it down now. Thanks very much, old chap" (to me). "I'll tell Kitty that you've let us. We can jab it off its hook with a billiard-cue, I should think, Moke. Come too, will you, Mr Fordyce? You can stand underneath and catch it, in case it comes down with a run. So long, Adrian!" The whole pack of them swept from the room, leaving the door open. When I looked in at the billiard-room on my way up to dress for dinner an hour later, nothing remained to mark the spot hitherto occupied by a signed and numbered proof of _An Ocean Greyhound_, by Michael Angelo Mahlstaff, A.R.A. (a wedding gift to my wife and myself from the artist), but the imprints of several hot hands on the wall, together with a series of parallel perpendicular scars, apparently inflicted by a full-sized harrow. From which two chapters it will be gathered that Robert Chalmers Fordyce was a man capable, in his ordinary working-day, of playing many parts. CHAPTER SEVEN. A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP. I. My wife and I would have been more than human if we had not occasionally cast a curious eye upon the relations of Robin and the Twins.