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know how one can avoid saying something that will jar. One can onlydo one’s best.” She wrote with a rapid hand, fastened the letter without glancing at it again, and handed it to her guest. “I have done as well as I could in a minute, and without any preparation. Thank you, Gregory.”
    â€œOught we all three of us to write?” said Geraldine, leaning back.
    â€œNo. We will let Agatha represent. The easiest again,” said Kate.
    â€œI think it must always fall to one member of a family to act on certain occasions,” said Agatha.
    â€œThe pains and privileges of the eldest!” said Geraldine.
    â€œPoor Mr. Spong!” said Agatha, holding an open letter in her hand. “He is sadly cut up, I am afraid. I feel so much for him. He knew I should, I think. I gather he guessed that, from his way of expressing himself.” She turned the letter over. “‘I know I can rely on an old friend’s heart being with me.’ ‘My dear Mrs. Calkin’”—the impulse conquered that had hardly commended itself— “’My beloved wife passed peacefully away this evening at nine o’clock. I am writing first of all to you; and I know I can rely upon an old friend’s heart being with me. I am a broken man. Yours in grief, and I am sure in gratitude, Dominic Spong.’ Yes, poor Dominic Spong! Poor Dominic! I think of him by his name now he is in this trouble. I remember him as a boy, before he became the experienced lawyer he is now. Only forty-five and a widower! Well, it is not for us to interpret these things.”
    â€œI don’t know whether he meant the letter for public recitation!” said Geraldine in an amused confidence to Gregory.
    â€œDominic Spong ought to be more than forty-five. He ought not to be a year younger than I am,” said Kate.
    â€œWhen you are so emphatically the baby of a household,” said Geraldine.
    â€œAh, he will age quickly now,” said Agatha, as though granting a tribute. “There are some things that do not leave us our youth.”
    â€œSome of us ought to be perennially young,” said Kate.
    â€œWell, I think you are younger,” said Agatha, with definite concession. “That is one advantage that you have.”
    â€œI ought to be going back to Mother,” said Gregory. “She has not heard about Mrs. Spong, and will want to write. Spong relies less on us than he does on you.”
    â€œIt was simply in his mind that I have had the same loss,” said Agatha.
    â€œHave you read anything interesting lately, Gregory?” said Geraldine.
    â€œNo. No improper books have come my way. And I am too young to read anything suitable for me. If I don’t have to hide my books from my mother, I can’t take any interest in them.”
    â€œThat is what you say,” said Agatha, smiling into his face as she shook his hand. “I don’t think you keep anything much from your mother. I don’t see sons doing that, the sort I have any experience of. I don’t fancy so.”

Chapter IV
    â€œWell, My Dear Matthew, you have come back to your father!” said Godfrey, greeting his son after his absence of eight hours. “Now I am never the same man without my Matthew, never quite myself with my firstborn away from me. How has your day gone, my boy?”
    â€œIt has been very interesting, thank you, Father.”
    â€œIt has been to your mind, has it? That is good news to me. Your research and all of it has been successful, has been what you call satisfactory? Because you don’t set out to discover anything as a general thing. That is not exactly your purpose for your day?”
    â€œNo, Father,” said Matthew, with his rough, deep laugh.
    â€œAh, now you’re laughing at your father. That is what you do when I come out with one of my speeches. Well, I don’t grudge you your crow over me. I am a proud man when I think of you and