The room, flooded with sunshine, was Mrs. Caspar's secret pride. She knew very well that there was nothing quite like it in Beachbourne, Old or New, and preserved it jealously. She did not understand it, much preferring her own kitchen, but she recognized that it stamped her husband for what he was, admired its atmosphere of distinction, and loved showing it to her rare visitors. On these occasions she stood herself in the passage, one arm of steel barring the door, like a priest showing the sanctuary to one without the pale. And it gave her malicious pleasure when Canon Willcocks, from the Rectory, opposite, calling one day, showed surprise, not untinged with jealousy, at what he was permitted to see. The Canon clearly thought it unseemly that Lazarus living at the Rectory gate should boast a room like that. And he was seriously annoyed when Anne, pointing to the Cavalier upon the wall, referred to the first Lord Ravensrood as "my children's ancestor." On the evening of the squabble in the kitchen, Ernie joined his father in the study after tea. As Alf was fond of remarking, "Ern's welcome there if no one else ayn't." Edward Caspar was sitting by the fire as usual, brooding over the meerschaum he was colouring. His manuscript lay where it usually lay on the chair at his side, and a critical eye would have noted that it was little thicker than when Mr. Trupp had first seen it some years before. "Ain't you well then, dad?" asked the boy in his beautiful little treble. "I'm all right, Boy-lad," the other answered. "Mother didn't touch you, did she?" There was something reassuring always about Ernie's manner with his father, as of a woman dealing with a sick child. "No," he replied. "She said I was to come to you." "Why were you caned at school?" asked the father, after a pause. The boy's eyes were down, and he scraped the floor with one foot. "Fighting," he said at last reluctantly. "Where it were, Alf sauce Aaron Huggett in de playground, and Aaron twist Alf's arm. Allowed he'd had more'n enough of Alf's lip. And he wouldn't leggo. So I paint his nose for him. And it bled." Edward Caspar puffed. "Why don't you let Alfred fight his own battles?" Steadfast to the tradition of his own class in this matter if in no other, he revolted against the common abbreviation of his younger son's name. "Alf fight!" cried Ernie with rare scorn. "He couldn't fight no-hows. D'isn't in him. He'd just break." "Then why does he sauce em?" Ernie resumed his foot scraping. "That's what I says to him," he admitted in his slow ca-a-ing speech. "Only where it seems he ca'an't keep his tongue tidy. Seems he ca'an't elp issalf like. Then he gets into trouble. Then I avs to fight for him." "And if you don't fight for him no one else will?" said his father.