‘Eighteen, only,’ answered Tor quietly. ‘I imagine I must have been an uncommonly disagreeable kind of child, as not one of my relatives, save Maud and Aunt Olive, ever expressed the smallest wish even to set eyes upon me, since the far-off day when I was banished to Heidelberg. I wonder if I have at all improved since then?’ Tor spoke lightly, but his shaft struck home, as he had meant it should. He was in reality fighting his friend’s battle, not his own, and he was indignant at the treatment Phil had received from his kindred. ‘Travelling was costly, many years ago, answered Mrs. Belassis calmly. ‘And for the past ten years, since you elected to live with your friend, you have been your own master, and have never paid us a visit.’ ‘Visitors generally wait to be asked, mamma,’ quoth Bertha pertly. ‘And you never would ask poor Phil. Maud and I have often begged you to.’ The conversation was becoming a little too pointed, and Maud was too happy to feel spiteful towards anyone, so at this juncture she interposed: ‘Oh, Phil, what did Tor say to parting with you? I always call him Tor, because you do, and I’ve quite forgotten his real name. Was he very much disgusted at your running away? Why didn’t you bring him with you?’ ‘Perhaps I should have done so, if I could. It seems quite odd to be without him; but the fact is, he’s ill—it was a sunstroke, and he has been ill ever since. He is under the care of a German doctor, and I hope he will soon be well.’ ‘Poor Tor!’ said Maud. ‘I should like to see him. He has been very good to you, hasn’t he, Phil?’ ‘Yes; we have been chums a long while now, and very good times we have had together. Yes, he saved me from a very uncongenial fate—an office-desk.’ ‘As things have turned out,’ said Mrs. Belassis drily, ‘you can afford to be grateful to your _friend_. Had you quarrelled, or had he died or even married, and left you without any means of support, or any profession by which you could earn a living, you would have felt differently towards him and towards those whose efforts for your welfare you thought fit to despise. By a mere chance, an eccentric will has made a rich man of you; but for that, you would sooner or later have had to taste the bitterness of poverty and beggary.’ Tor smiled carelessly. ‘I should at least not have begged from mine uncle. I might even have managed to support myself by my own handiwork, had that dreadful fate befallen me—the necessity to earn my own bread.’ ‘I am glad to hear it, Philip. That being the case, I am only surprised that you have been content to live so long upon charity.’ Tor laughed carelessly. Such a suggestion merely amused him. It might have hurt the true Phil. ‘I perceive I have reached the realistic country, where everything is reckoned by pounds, shillings, and pence. In friendship we calculate differently. Tor always said—and he spoke truly, I believe—that the debt of gratitude was mutual.’