enjoying his conversation with his cousin none the less for the discovery that Miss Coppinger, who was younger than he, had preserved her youth very much less successfully than he had done.

The cross-examination had moved on to the subject of Larry's religion, and the combative fervour of Major Dick's Protestantism might have edified John Knox.

"But look here, Frederica," he said, putting down his cup and saucer, with a crash, on the high mantelpiece, "you don't mean to tell me that the boy has to go to Mass with the servants—on the cook's lap, I suppose—on the outside car! Good Heeavens! Poor old Tom! Talk about turning in his grave! I should think he was going head over heels in it by this time!"

This referred to the late Colonel Coppinger, the genuineness of whose conversion to his wife's Church had never been accepted by Major Talbot-Lowry.

"My dear Dick!" said Lady Isabel.

Miss Coppinger closed her lips tightly with an air of high self-control.

"That is a matter of opinion!" she said blandly. "Tom was perfectly aware of what changing his religion involved, in this country—though it's probably quite different in India. In any case, the thing is done, and as I believe it to be my Duty to send Larry to his chapel, to his chapel he shall go!"

Unimaginative people, or those of limited vocabulary, affixed to Miss Coppinger the ancient label: "A typical old maid," and considered that no further definition was required; and, since her appearance conformed in some degree with stage traditions, there is something to be said for them. If labels are to be employed, even the least complex of human beings would suggest a much-travelled portmanteau, covered with tags and shreds from hotels and railways. Frederica shall not be labelled; let it suffice to say that she was tall and thin, and nearer fifty than forty (which was a far greater age thirty years ago than it is now), and that she had a sense of fair play that was proof against her zeal as an Irish Church-woman. It is true that she mentioned what she regarded as the disaster of Larry's religion in her prayers, but she did so without heat, leaving the matter, without irreverence, to the common sense of Larry's Creator, who, she felt must surely recognise the disadvantages of the position as it stood.

"I cannot possibly interfere with Larry's religion," pursued Miss Coppinger, with a defiant eye on her cousin, "and as soon as we are a little more settled down I shall ask the priest to lunch. Farther than that I don't feel called upon to go."

"Draw the line at dinner, eh?" said Major Dick, with large and humorous tolerance: "I know very little about the feller—he's newly come to the parish—he mayn't be a bad sort for all I know—I'm bound to say he's got a black-muzzled look about him, but we might go farther and fare worse. I should certainly have him to lunch if I were you. Have a good big joint of roast beef, and don't forget to give him his whack of whisky!"

"I never have whisky in the house," said Miss Coppinger repressively. "Claret, I could give him—?"

Major Talbot-Lowry looked down at his cousin with the condescending amusement that he felt to be the meed of female godliness especially when allied with temperance principles.

"Well, claret might do for once in a way," he conceded, shaking his long legs to take the creases out of his trousers, "and you mightn't find Father Sweeny so anxious to repeat the dose—and that mightn't be any harm either! I daresay you wouldn't object to that, Frederica! Well, good-bye, ladies! I'm going down to the kennels—"

Lady Isabel's and Miss Coppinger's eyes followed him, as he swung, with that light halt in his leisurely stride, down the long drawing-room, trolling in the high baritone, that someone had pleased him by likening to a cavalry trumpet,

In both his wife's and his cousin's faces was the same look, the look that often comes into women's faces when, unperceived, they regard the sovereign creature. Future generations may not know that look, but in the faces of these women, born in the earlier half of the nineteenth century, there was something of awe, and of indulgence, of apprehension, and of pity. Dick was so powerful, so blundering, so childlike. Miss Frederica expressed something of their common thought when she said:

"Dick seems to forget that he is Larry's guardian as well as I. Also that Larry is a Roman Catholic, and it is not only useless but dishonourable to ignore it!"

It has been said that Lady Isabel had les qualitiés de ses défauts; in Miss Coppinger's case the words may be restored to their rightful sequence. She had the inevitable défauts de ses qualités. The sense of duty was as prominent a feature of her soul as a hump on her long straight back would have been, but toleration was inconspicuous. She ran straight herself, and though she could forgive deviations on the part of others, she could not forget them. She was entirely and implacably Protestant, a typical member of that Church that expects friendship from its votaries, but leaves their course of action to their own consciences. It was a very successful example of the malign humour of Fate that Miss Coppinger's ward should belong to the other Church, that exacts not only obedience, but passion, and it was a master-stroke that Frederica's sense of duty should compel her to enforce her nephew to compliance with its demands.

"Dear Frederica, Dick will leave all religious things to you, I know—" warbled Lady Isabel, in her gentle, musical voice, that suggested something between the tones of a wood pigeon and an ocarina. "And they couldn't be in better hands!"

"But my dear Isabel, that is precisely what I complain of! Dick's solitary suggestion has been that we should send Larry to Winchester, which is perfectly impracticable! I entirely agree with him, but, unfortunately, I know that it is our duty to send him to one of those—" Miss Coppinger hesitated, swallowed several adjectives, and ended with Christian tameness—"one of those special schools for Roman Catholics."

"Well, dear, I daresay it won't make very much difference," consoled Lady Isabel. "I have always heard that Monkshurst was a charming school, and dear Larry will be so well off—I don't suppose his religion will interfere in any way. It seldom does, does it?"

"Not, I admit, unless he wanted a job in this country!" began Miss Coppinger grimly, and again remembered that intolerance was not to be encouraged. "The end of it is that I shall endeavour to do my duty—which is, apparently, to do everything that I most entirely disapprove of—and that on the day Larry is twenty-one, I shall march out of Coppinger's Court, and dance a jig, and then he may have the Pope to stay with him if he likes!"

While Miss Coppinger was thus belabouring and releasing her conscience in the drawing-room, quite another matter was engaging the attention of her ward, and of his entertainers at the school-room tea-table. This was no less a thing than the dissolving of the existing Bands, and the formation of a new society, to be known as "The Companions of Finn."

Larry Coppinger's entrance, literally at a bound, into the Talbot-Lowry family group, had landed him, singularly enough, into the heart of their affection and esteem. He was now the originator of this revolutionary scheme, and having in him that special magnetic force that confers leadership, the scheme was being put through.

"The point is," he said, eagerly, "that when we are split up into two bands, we can do nothing much, but the lot of us together might—might make quite a difference."

"Difference to what?" said Richard, ex-chief of the Elder