Uncle Mo resumed:--"So perhaps you're right to put it they are like my own children, and M'riar's." He was so chivalrously anxious not to exclude his co-guardian from her rights that he might have laid himself open to be misunderstood by a stranger. Miss Grahame understood him, however. So she did, thoroughly, when he went on:--"I don't take at all kindly, though, to their growing older. Can't be helped, I suppose. There's a many peculiar starts in this here world, and him as don't like 'em just has to lump 'em. As I look at it, changes are things one has to put up with. If we had been handy when we was first made, we might have got our idears attended to, to oblige. Things are fixtures, now." Miss Grahame laughed, and abstained consciously from referring to the inscrutable decrees of Providence which called aloud for recognition. "Of course, children shouldn't grow," she said. "I should like them to remain three, especially the backs of their necks." Uncle Mo's benevolent countenance shone with an unholy cannibalism, as he nodded a mute approval. There was something very funny to his hearer in this old man's love of children, and his professional engagements of former years, looked at together. Aunt M'riar took the subject _au serieux_. "Now you're talking silly, Mo," she said. "If the children never grew, where would the girls be? And a nice complainin' you men would make then!" Miss Grahame made an effort to get away from abstract Philosophy. "I'm afraid it can't be helped now, anyhow," said she. "Dave _is_ growing, and means to be a man. Oh dear--he'll be a man before we know it. He'll be able to read and write in a few months." Uncle Mo's face showed a cloud. "Do ye really think that, ma'am?" he said. "Well--I'm afeared you may be right." He looked so dreadfully downcast at this, that Miss Grahame was driven to the conclusion that the subject was dangerous. She could not, however, resist saying:--"He _must_ know _some_ time, you know, Mr. Wardle. Surely you would never have Dave grow up uneducated?" "Not so sure about that, ma'am!" said Uncle Mo, shaking a dubious head. "There's more good men spiled by schoolmasters than we hear tell of in the noospapers." What conspiracy of silence in the Press this pointed at did not appear. But it was clear from the tone of the speaker that he thought interested motives were at the bottom of it.