“It wasn’t a whopper. He _has_ lost it, because I took it myself; and he was looking for it all over the place this morning.” “Well, I fancy it might be better for you to cut along as soon as you get the music, and leave me to tackle him alone.” “He’ll think it queer if I go, when we came together.” “I fancy he thinks it pretty queer as it is. My idea, you know, was to speak perfectly openly to him, and I can hardly do that if you’re here.” “What do you want to speak to him about?” “About Grif, of course. I shall approach the subject as gently as possible.... Do you _want_ to stay?” “Only for a few minutes. Do you mind sitting there? and I’ll sit here.” He moved the lamp a little, also the chair which Mr. Bradley presumably would take. The organist came in. It seemed that the music wasn’t downstairs after all; he must have left it in the church: but he did not ask how Grif was, which was what Doctor O’Neill wanted him to do. The doctor was himself obliged to broach the subject, saying that the little boy was not getting on so well as he had expected; but Mr. Bradley’s regrets were politely indifferent――so markedly so, that the doctor decided he had better defer any further mention of the matter till Palmer should be gone. Presently he made a sign to the boy, but Palmer appeared all at once to have grown stupid, and merely gazed at the doctor with an irritating blankness of expression. They discussed music, of which the doctor knew nothing, and Mr. Bradley, with an air of boredom so profound that it must have been assumed, listened to the remarks he hazarded. They talked on, and never in his life had Doctor O’Neill been subjected to such a subtle rudeness. He felt that he should not be able to stand it much longer. Every observation Mr. Bradley now let drop was, he knew, a more or less direct invitation for them to take their departure, and the doctor at last began to experience a certain curiosity as to how far such a conversation could go before it became brutally explicit. He had endeavoured to lead Mr. Bradley to talk about the past, but very soon he had seen the uselessness of such an attempt. Mr. Bradley, he now felt sure, knew precisely what they were there for, and it was only because he derived a malicious satisfaction from the doctor’s discomfort that he did not cut the interview short on the spot. Certainly, if he _had_ seen through them, he was taking an ample revenge. The doctor felt at present that where he had made a fatal mistake was in bringing Palmer. It was Palmer who had aroused the organist’s suspicions: without Palmer all might have been well. Meanwhile, the red-haired boy seemed to take no notice of anything they were saying. He had begun to examine the books on the shelf near him, reading out several of the titles in an undertone. “_Hallucinations!_ My father has that book, I think.” Mr. Bradley glanced malevolently in the boy’s direction, and the doctor asked politely, “Are you interested in the subject?”