There was a span of silence. John mechanically drew his pipe from his pocket, eyed it with longing, and replaced it. Miss Lindon took the aged black-and-tan terrier in her arms and whispered to it in baby language. She was a million leagues from divining the object of her nephew's visit. John looked at her despairingly. Had she not a single grain of common sense? At last he strode across the room, a Gulliver in a new Lilliput, and sat down again by her side. “Look here, 'Aunt Gladys,” he said desperately, “if I adopt a young woman of sixteen, I must have another woman in the house--a lady, one of my own family. I could n't have people saying horrid things about her and me.” Miss Lindon assented to the proposition. John was far too young and good-looking (“Oh, Lord!” cried John)--yes, he was--to pose as the father of a pretty, grown-up young woman. “The poor child is n't pretty,” said he. “It does n't matter,” replied Miss Lindon. “Beauty is only skin deep, and I 've known plain people who are quite fascinating. There was Captain Brownlow's wife--do you remember the Brownlows? Your poor mother was so fond of them--” “Yes, yes,” said John, impatiently. “He had wet hands, and used to mess my face about when I was a kid. I hated it. The question is, however, whom am I going to get to help me with Unity Blake?” “Ah, yes, to be sure. Poor little Unity! You must bring her to see me sometimes. Give me notice, and I 'll make her some of my cream-puffs. Children are always so fond of them. _You_ ought to remember my cream-puffs.” “Good heavens!” he cried, with a gesture that set the dog barking. “There 's no question of cream-puffs. Can't you see what I'm driving at? I want you to come and keep house for me and help me to look after the child.” He rose, and his great form towered so threateningly over her that Dandy barked at him with a toy terrier's furious and impotent rage. “I come and live with you?” gasped Miss Lindon. [Illustration: 0094] “Yes,” said John, turning away and lumbering back to the fireplace. The dog, perceiving that he had struck terror into the heart of his enemy, dismissed him with a scornful snarl, and curled himself up by the side of his stupefied mistress. It was done; the proposal had been made, according to the demands of his pig-headedness. Now that he had made it, he realized its insanity. He contrasted this home of flim-flammeries and its lap-dogs and canaries and old-maidish futilities with his own tobacco-saturated and paper-littered den; this life of trivialities with his own fighting career; this incapacity to grasp essentials with his own realization of the conflict of world-forces. The ludicrous incongruity of a partnership between the two of them in so fateful a business as the healing of a human soul appealed to his somewhat dull sense of humour. The whole idea was preposterous. In his saturnine way he laughed. “It's rather a mad notion, is n't it?”