“Oh, the regulations are suspended on this, your last night at home. I will say, however, if it hadn’t been for my discipline, you and your brothers would long since have worn your mother to a thread with your demonstrative affection.” The colonel’s discipline had always consisted in letting his sons do exactly as they had pleased, and their demonstrative affection was directly inherited from him. All this Mrs. Tremaine knew perfectly well and smiled, but, like a discreet wife, permitted the colonel to think that it was his iron hand which had kept everything in order at Harrowby. In the study below, Lyddon and Richard Tremaine sat smoking while Archie in a corner by the fireplace dreamily played his fiddle. Angela, whose bedtime was supposed to be when Mrs. Tremaine went upstairs, flitted in and out of the room. She felt it due to Neville that she should give him a little time before that last hurried parting at dawn the next morning. Presently the sound of Neville’s step in the hall was heard. Archie stopped his fiddling and cried: “There’s Neville! I want to see him again to-night. I’m going to ask him to send me a new bird gun like the one he had here last year.” “Stay where you are, you little whipper-snapper,” said Richard with authority. “What for?” asked Archie, wondering. Richard looked at Lyddon and then answered Archie. “Because Neville is with Angela, you little idiot.” “Well, suppose he is,” answered the unsuspecting Archie. “Angela’s always with Neville for that matter.” And Richard, rising and taking him by the back of his neck, plumped him down in a chair and told him to stay there until his brother should come in. In a little while Neville entered, and Archie began on the subject of the bird gun, which Neville promised to send to him, and then the boy went off to bed.