UNCLE GEORGE. Of course, above the belt, you'll understand, Julia! Now the Camberwell Chicken--

MY UNCLE JERVAS. Applied, I say, with sufficient force to awake him to the stern--shall we say the harsh realities of life.

AUNT JULIA. Life can be real without sordid brutality.

UNCLE JERVAS. Not unless one is blind and deaf, or runs away and hides from his fellows like a coward; for brutality, alas, is a very human attribute and slumbers more or less in each one of us, let us deny it how we will.

UNCLE GEORGE. True enough, Jervas, and as you'll remember when I fought the "Camberwell Chicken," my right ogle being closed and claret flowing pretty freely, the crowd afraid of their money--

MY AUNT (coldly determined). Enough! My nephew shall never experience such horrors or consort with such brutish ruffians.

UNCLE GEORGE. Then he'll never be a man, Julia.

MY AUNT. Nature made him that. I intend him for a poet.

Here my uncle George rose up, sat down and rose again, striving for speech, while uncle Jervas smiled and dangled his eyegla.s.s.

MY UNCLE GEORGE (breathing heavily). That's done it, Jervas, that's one in the wind. A poet! Poor, poor lad.

MY AUNT (triumphantly). He has written some charming sonnets, and an ode to a throstle that has been much admired.

UNCLE GEORGE (faintly). Ode! B'gad! Throstle!

MY UNCLE JERVAS. He trifles with paints and brushes, too, I believe?

MY AUNT. Charmingly! He may dazzle the world with a n.o.ble picture yet; who knows?

MY UNCLE JERVAS. Oh, my dear Julia, who indeed! He has a p.r.o.nounced aversion for most manly sports, I believe: horses, for instance--

MY AUNT. He rides with me occasionally, but as for your inhuman hunting and racing--certainly not!

UNCLE GEORGE. And before we were his age, I had broken my collarbone and you had won the county steeplechase from me by a head, Jervas. Ha, that was a race, lad, never enjoyed anything more unless it was when the "Camberwell Chicken" went down and couldn't come up to time and the crowd--

AUNT JULIA. You were both so terribly wild and reckless!

UNCLE JERVAS. No, my sweet woman, just ordinary healthy young animals.

AUNT JULIA. My nephew is a young gentleman.

UNCLE GEORGE. Ha!

UNCLE JERVAS. H'm! A gentleman should know how to use his fists--there is Sir Peter Vibart, for instance.

UNCLE GEORGE. And to shoot straight, Julia.

UNCLE JERVAS. And comport himself in the society of the s.e.x. Yet you keep Peregrine as secluded as a young nun.

MY AUNT. He prefers solitude. Love will come later.

UNCLE JERVAS. Most unnatural! Before I was Peregrine's age I had been head over ears in and out of love with at least--

MY AUNT. Reprobate!

UNCLE GEORGE. So had I, Julia. There was Mary--or was it Ann--at least if it wasn't Ann it was Betty or Bessie; anyhow, I know she was--

AUNT JULIA. Rake!

UNCLE JERVAS. Remember, we were very young and had never been privileged to behold the Lady Julia Conroy--

UNCLE GEORGE. Begad, Julia--and there y'have it!

MY AUNT. We were discussing my nephew, I think!

MY UNCLE JERVAS. True, Julia, and I was about to remark that since you refuse to send him up to Oxford or Cambridge, the only chance I see for him is to quit your ap.r.o.n strings and go out into the world to find his manhood if he can.

My aunt turned upon the speaker, handsome head upflung, but, ere she could speak, the grandfather clock in the corner rang the hour in its mellow chime. Thereupon my aunt rose to her stately height and reached out to me her slender, imperious hand.

"Peregrine, it is ten o'clock. Good night, dear boy!" said she and kissed me. Thereafter, having kissed the hand that clasped mine, I bowed to my two uncles and went dutifully to bed.

CHAPTER II

TELLS HOW AND WHY I SET FORTH UPON THE QUEST IN QUESTION

"Ladylike!" said I to myself, leaning forth from my chamber window into a fragrant summer night radiant with an orbed moon. But for once I was heedless of the ethereal beauty of the scene before me and felt none of that poetic rapture that would otherwise undoubtedly have inspired me, since my vision was turned inwards rather than out and my customary serenity hatefully disturbed.

"Ladylike!"

Thus, all unregarding, I breathed the incense of flowery perfumes and stared blindly upon the moon's splendour, pondering this hateful word in its application to myself. And gradually, having regard to the manifest injustice and bad taste of the term, conscious of the affront it implied, I grew warm with a righteous indignation that magnified itself into a furious anger against my two uncles.

"d.a.m.n them! d.a.m.n them both!" exclaimed I and, in that moment, caught my breath, shocked, amazed, and not a little ashamed at this outburst, an exhibition so extremely foreign to my usually placid nature.

'To swear is a painful exhibition of vulgarity, and pa.s.sion uncontrolled lessens one's dignity and is a sign of weakness.'

Remembering this, one of my wonderful aunt's incontrovertible maxims, I grew abashed (as I say) by reason of this my deplorable lapse. And yet:

"'Ladylike!'"

I repeated the opprobrious epithet for the third time and scowled up at the placid moon.

And this, merely because I had a shrinking horror of all brutal and sordid things, a detestation for anything smacking of vulgarity or bad taste. To me, the subtle beauty of line or colour, the singing music of a phrase, were of more account than the reek of stables or the whooping clamour and excitement of the hunting-field, my joys being rather raptures of the soul than the more material pleasures of the flesh.

"And was it," I asked myself, "was it essential to exchange buffets with a 'Camberwell Chicken,' to shoot and be shot at, to spur sweating and unwilling horses over dangerous fences--were such things truly necessary to prove one's manhood? a.s.suredly not! And yet--'Ladylike!'"