Chapter 35 - Page 2

concerned with such details. Our task is purely literary." His attention wandered. He began to fidget, and finally bent down and looked under the table. "What have we here?" he asked.

Stephen looked also, and for a moment they smiled at each other over the prostrate figure of a child, who was cuddling Mr. Pembroke's boots. "She's after the blacking," he explained. "If we left her there, she'd lick them brown."

"Indeed. Is that so very safe?"

"It never did me any harm. Come up! Your tongue's dirty."

"Can I--" She was understood to ask whether she could clean her tongue on a lollie.

"No, no!" said Mr. Pembroke. "Lollipops don't clean little girls' tongues."

"Yes, they do," he retorted. "But she won't get one." He lifted her on his knee, and rasped her tongue with his handkerchief.

"Dear little thing," said the visitor perfunctorily. The child began to squall, and kicked her father in the stomach. Stephen regarded her quietly. "You tried to hurt me," he said. "Hurting doesn't count. Trying to hurt counts. Go and clean your tongue yourself. Get off my knee." Tears of another sort came into her eyes, but she obeyed him. "How's the great Bertie?" he asked.

"Thank you. My nephew is perfectly well. How came you to hear of his existence?"

"Through the Silts, of course. It isn't five miles to Cadover."

Mr. Pembroke raised his eyes mournfully. "I cannot conceive how the poor Silts go on in that great house. Whatever she intended, it could not have been that. The house, the farm, the money,-- everything down to the personal articles that belong to Mr. Failing, and should have reverted to his family!"

"It's legal. Interstate succession."

"I do not dispute it. But it is a lesson to one to make a will. Mrs. Keynes and myself were electrified."

"They'll do there. They offered me the agency, but--" He looked down the cultivated slopes. His manners were growing rough, for he saw few gentlemen now, and he was either incoherent or else alarmingly direct. "However, if Lawrie Silt's a Cockney like his father, and if my next is a boy and like me--" A shy beautiful look came into his eyes, and passed unnoticed. "They'll do," he repeated. "They turned out Wilbraham and built new cottages, and bridged the railway, and made other necessary alterations." There was a moment's silence.

Mr. Pembroke took out his watch. "I wonder if I might have the trap? I mustn't miss my train, must I? It is good of you to have granted me an interview. It is all quite plain?"

"Yes."

"A case of half and half-division of profits."

"Half and half?" said the young farmer slowly. "What do you take me for? Half and half, when I provide ten of the stories and you only four?"

"I--I--" stammered Mr. Pembroke.

"I consider you did me over the long story, and I'm damned if you do me over the short