"Same thing? Rot! Fat lot you know about it, Dilly. It's a rum thing,"

he added to me in a reflective bawl, "but women never can understand the rules of any game. Stinker is a bargee, but he was quite right to lam me. It was for disobedience; and disobedience is cheek; and no master worth his salt will stand cheek. So Stinker says, and he is right for once."

Gerald is the possessor of a bosom friend, an excessively silent and rather saturnine youth of about his own age. His name is Donkin, and he regards Gerald, so far as I can see, with a grim mixture of amusement and compassion. He pays frequent visits to my house, as his father is a soldier in India; and he is much employed by the Twins for corroborating or refuting the more improbable of their brother's reminiscences.

Robin soon made friends with the boys. Like most of their kind, their tests of human probity were few and simple: and having discovered that Robin not only played Rugby football, but had on several occasions represented Edinburgh University thereat, they straightway wrote him down a "decent chap" and took the rest of his virtues for granted.

It came upon them--and me too, as a matter of fact--as rather a shock one evening, when Robin, during the course of a desultory conversation on education in general, suddenly launched forth _more suo_ into a diatribe against the English Public School system.

English boys, he pointed out, were passed through a great machine, which ground up the individual at one end and disgorged a mere type at the other--("Pretty good type too, Robin," from me),--they were taught to worship bodily strength--("Quite right too!" said my herculean brother-in-law),--they were herded together under a monastic system; they were removed from the refining influence of female society--(even the imperturable Donkin snorted at this),--and worst of all, little or nothing was done to eradicate from their minds the youthful idea that it is unmanly to read seriously or think deeply.

I might have said a good deal in reply. I might have dwelt upon the fact that the English Public School system is not so hard upon the stupid boy--which means the average boy--as that of more strenuous forcing-houses of intellect abroad. I might have spoken of one or two moral agents which prevent our schools from being altogether despicable: unquestioning obedience to authority, for instance, or loyalty to tradition. I might have told of characters moulded and fibres stiffened by responsibility--our race bears more responsibility on its shoulders than all the rest of the world put together--or of minds trained to interpret laws and balance justice in the small but exacting world of the prefects' meeting and the games' committee. But it was Gerald, who is no moralist, but a youth of sound common-sense, who closed the argument.

"Mr Fordyce," he said, "it's no use _my_ jawing to you, because you can knock me flat at that game; and of course old Moke there"--this was Master Donkin's unhappy but inevitable designation among his friends--"is too thick to argue with a stuffed rabbit; but you had better come down some time and see the place--that's all."

Robin promised to suspend judgment pending a personal investigation, and the incident closed.

Gerald's verdict on Robin's views, communicated to me privately afterwards, was characteristic but not unfavourable.

"He seems to have perfectly putrid notions about some things, but he's a pretty sound chap on the whole--the best secretary you have had, anyhow, old man. Have you seen him do a straight-arm balance on the billiard-table?"

But I did not fully realise how completely Robin had settled down as an accepted member of my household until one afternoon towards the end of the Christmas holidays.

There is a small but snug apartment opening out of my library, through an arched and curtained doorway. The library is regarded as my workroom--impregnable, inviolable; not to be rudely attempted by devastating housemaids. There is a sort of tacit agreement between Kitty and myself as regards this apartment. Fatima-like, she may do what she pleases with the rest of the house. She may indulge her passion for drawing-room meetings to its fullest extent. She may intertain missionaries in the attics and hold meetings of the Dorcas Society in the basement. She may give reformed burglars the run of the silver-closet, and allow curates and chorus-girls to mingle in sweet companionship on the staircase. But she must leave the library alone, and neither she nor her following must overflow through its double doors during what I call business hours.

On this particular afternoon I had been engaged upon the draft of a small bill with which I had been entrusted--we will call it the "Importation of Mad Dogs Bill,"--and about four o'clock I handed it to Robin with instructions to write out a fair copy. Robin retired into his inner chamber, and I sat down in an arm-chair with _Punch_. (It was a Wednesday, the Parliamentary half-holiday of those days, and still, happily, the _Punch_-day of these.)

Kitty was holding a Drawing-room Meeting upstairs. I forget what description of body she was entertaining: it was either a Society for the Propagation of something which could never, in the nature of things, come to birth; or else an Association for the Prevention of something that was bound to go on so long as the world endured. I had been mercifully absolved from attending, and my tea had been sent in to me. I was enjoying an excellent caricature of my Chief in the minor cartoon of _Punch_, when I heard the door of the inner room open and the voice of my daughter inquire--

"Are you _drefful_ busy, Uncle Robin?" (My secretary had been elevated to avuncular rank after a probation of just three hours.)

There was a sound as of a chair being pushed back, and a rustle which suggested the hasty laying aside of a manuscript, and Robin's voice said--

"Come away, Philly!" (This is a favourite Scoticism of Robin's, and appears to be a term denoting hearty welcome.)

There was a delighted squeal and the sound of pattering feet. Next ensued a period of rather audible osculation, and then there was silence. Presently Phillis said--

"What shall we do? Shall I sing you a hymn?"

Evidently the revels were about to commence.

"I have just learned a new one," she continued. "I heared it in Church yesterday afternoon, so I brought it home and changed it a bit. It's called 'Onward, Chwistian Sailors!'"

"'_Soldiers_,' isn't it?"

"No--'_Sailors_.' It _was_ 'Soldiers,' but I like sailors much better than soldiers, so I changed it. I'll sing it now."

"Wait till Sunday," said Robin, with much presence of mind. "Will you not tell me a story?"

This idea appeared so good that Phillis began forthwith.

"Once there were three horses what lived in a stable. Two was wise and one was just a foolish young horse. There was some wolves what lived quite near the stable----"

"Wolves?" said my secretary, in tones of mild surprise.

"The stable," explained Phillis, "stood in the midst of the snowy plains of Muscovy. I should have telled you that before."

"Just so," said Robin gravely. "Go on."

"Well, one day," continued the narratress's voice through the curtains--I knew the story by heart, so I was able to fill up the gaps for myself when she dropped to a confidential whisper--"one cold, windy, berleak day, the old wolves said to the young ones, 'How about a meal of meat?' and all the young one's said, 'Oh, _let's_!'

"That very morning," continued Phillis in the impressive bass which she reserves for the most exciting parts of her narrative, "that _very_ morning the foolish young horse said to the old horses, 'Who is for a scamper to-day?' Then he began to wiggle and wiggle at his halter. The old horses said, 'There is wolves outside, and our master says that they eat all sheep an' cattle an' horses,' But the young horse just wiggled and wiggled,"--I could hear my daughter suiting the action to the word upon her audience's knee,--"and pwesently his halter was off! Then out he rushed, kicking up the nimble snow with his feathery heels, and--what?"

Robin, who was automatically murmuring something about transferred epithets, apologised for this pedantic lapse, and the tale proceeded.

"Well, just as he was goin' to have one more scamper, he felt a growl--a awful, fearful, deep _growl_,"--Phillis's voice sank to a bloodcurdling and continuous gurgle--"and he terrembled, like this! I'll show you----"

She slipped off Robin's knee, and I knew that she was now on the hearth-rug, simulating acute palsy for his benefit.

"Then he felt somefing on his back, then somefing further up his back, then a bite at his neck; and then he felt his head bitten off, and he died. Now you tell me one."

"Which?"

Phillis considered.

"The one about the Kelpie and the Wee Bit Lassie."

Robin obliged. At first he stumbled a little, and had to be prompted in hoarse whispers by Phillis (who apparently had heard the story several times before); but as the narrative progressed and the adventures of the wee bit lassie grew more enthralling and the Kelpie more terrifying, he became almost as immersed as his audience. When I peeped through the curtain they were both sitting on the hearth-rug pressed close together, Phillis gripping one of Robin's enormous hands in a pleasurable condition of terrified interest. The fair copy of the "Importation of Mad Dogs Bill," I regret to say, lay on the floor under the table. I retired to my arm-chair.

"The Kelpie," Robin continued, "came closer and closer behind her.

Already she could feel a hot breath on her neck." (So could Robin on his, for that matter.) "But she did not give in. She ran faster and faster until----"

"You've forgotten to say she could hear its webbed feet going _pad pad_ over the slippery stanes," interpolated Phillis anxiously.

"So I did. I'm sorry. She could hear its webbed feet going _pad pad_ over the slippery stanes. Presently though, she came to a wee bit housie on the moor. It was empty, but she slippit through the yard-gate and flew along the path and in at the door. The Kelpie came flying through the gate----"

"No, no--it loupit ower the dyke!" screamed Phillis, who would countenance no tamperings with the original text.

"Oh, yes. It loupit ower the dyke, but the wee lassie just slammed the door in its face, and turned the key. Then she felt round in the dark and keeked about, wondering what kind of place she was in. And at that very moment, through a bit window in the wall----"

"She went ben first."

"Oh, yes. She went ben; and at that very moment, through the bit window in the back-end of the house, there came a ray of light. The sun----"

"The sun had risen," declaimed Phillis, triumphantly taking up the tale; "and with one wild sheriek of disappointed rage the Kelpie vanished away, and the wee lassie was _saved_!"

There was a rapt pause after this exciting anecdote. Then Phillis remarked--

"Uncle Robin, let's write that story down, and then I can get people to read it to me."