“Then, my dear Grace,” said I; “you take a chair and listen. If I keep you here till two, I’m going over it again, and I’m going to make you listen.” “Oh, are you?” Had Grace been any one but Grace, I should have said she positively snorted. “Oh, are you, Dimmy? Don’t you be too jolly sure about it.” I grieve to state that my ultimatum in Grace’s opinion constituted a _casus belli_. The flying squadron immediately received orders to sail, the blood darted all over her face in the most pictorial manner, and she picked one of the books of the Rector’s off the table. She began to skirmish a bit, making several feints, and awaiting her opportunity. “I don’t want to, Dimmy, you know,” said she. “But by Jingo if you do, Grace,” said I. “You’d better come out of it, Dimmy, you know,” said this armed belligerent, trying to show that our relations were not yet so strained but that a conciliatory tone might preserve the peace, even at this late hour. “It’s not a bit funny, you know. It wasn’t exactly what one ’ud call a good joke at the start, and now it’s getting as stale as anything.” “If it _is_ a joke,” I quoted, “it’s not at all obvious. When I _want_ to be bored I read _Punch_.” Crash came _Pearson on the Creed_ full at my head. I dodged, of course, but the momentum of that weighty theological work as it hurtled against the resisting oak panel of the library door was really ominous. The noise appeared to shake the foundations of the house. “I’m glad,” said I, “that my nerves are fitted with rubber tyres and ball bearings.” It was some relief to see that the countenance of the enemy had now changed to one of rue. _Pearson on the Creed_, lay _sans_ covers and practically disembowelled at my feet. Poor Grace flopped on her knees and began to gather the mutilated members of this old but highly respectable tome. “Dimmy, you’re a brute! a beast! that’s what you are!” she cried. “Do you see what _you_’ve done? Oh, father will be angry! Oh, he will talk! He will be eloquent! He’ll be ever such a lot worse than he is on Sundays.” His daughter, still on her knees, looked the picture of despair. “Will he be cursive?” I amiably inquired. “No,” said the miserable Grace, vainly trying to readjust the fragments. “He don’t take on like that. Wish he did; then it wouldn’t be so rough. When he has you on the carpet, he chucks a lot of high dictionary language at you, like he does in his sermons--awful big words, you know; what you can’t understand, you know. And they _must_ mean a dreadful lot more than those you can, mustn’t they? Oh, he’s just horribly, awfully polite. Last time he told me ‘to restrain my primeval instincts.’ That’s a nice thing to say, isn’t it? Does he mean don’t play the goat, or what? Shouldn’t mind if I only knew what he meant.” “He means don’t play the Angora,” said the luminous I, with an air of knowledge.