One night it fell to my lot to dine in the City, as the guest of the Honourable Company of Tile-Glazers and Mortar-Mixers. As I swam forlornly through a turgid ocean of turtle-soup and clarified punch towards an unyielding continent of fish, irrigated by brown sherry, mechanically rehearsing to myself the series of sparkling yet statesmanlike epigrams with which I proposed to reply to the toast of his Majesty's Ministers I became aware that the gentleman on my left was addressing me in a voice that seemed vaguely familiar. "And how is my brother's second boy doing with you, Mr Inglethwaite?" I must have looked a trifle blank, for he added-- "My nephew, Robin." I glanced obliquely at the card which marked his place at table, and read-- _Sir James Fordyce._ Then I began to grasp the situation, and I realised that this great man, whose name was honourably known wherever the ills of childhood are combated, was Robin's uncle, the "doctor" to whom my secretary had casually referred, and whom he occasionally went to visit on Sunday afternoons. I had pictured an overdriven G.P., living in Bloomsbury or Balham, with a black bag, and a bulge in his hat where he kept his stethoscope. A man sufficiently distinguished to represent his profession at a public banquet was more than I had bargained for. We became friends at once, and supported each other, so to speak, amid the multitude of dinners and dishes, our respective neighbours proving but broken reeds so far as social intercourse was concerned. On Sir James's left, I remember, sat a plethoric gentleman whose burnished countenance gave him the appearance of a sort of incarnate Glazed Tile; while my right-hand neighbour, from the manner in which he manipulated the food upon his plate, I put down without hesitation as a Mortar Mixer of high standing. The old gentleman gave me a good deal of information about Robin. "He had a hard fight his first year or two in London," he said. "I could see by the way he fell upon his dinner when he came to my house that his meat and drink were not easily come by. Still, now that he has won through, he will not regret the experience. I had it myself. It is the finest training that a young man can receive. Hard, terribly hard, but invaluable! You will not have seen his father yet--my brother John?" I told him no. "Well, try and meet him. You, as an Englishman, would perhaps call him hard and narrow,--after forty years of London I sometimes find him so myself,--but he is a fine man, and he has a good wife. So have you," he added unexpectedly--"Robin has told me that." I laughed, in what the Twins call the "silly little gratified way" which obtrudes itself into my demeanour when any one praises Kitty. "I hope you are in the same happy situation," I said. "No, I am a bachelor. My brother John has not achieved a K.C.B., but he is a more fortunate man than I." The conversation dropped here, but I repeated it to my wife afterwards.