shivered. Grindley junior, a fair-haired, well-shaped youth, with eyes that the other sex found attractive, leant with his hands in his pockets against a scrupulously robed statue of Diana, and appeared uncomfortable.

“I’m making the money—making it hand over fist. All you’ll have to do will be to spend it,” Grindley senior was explaining to his son and heir.

“I’ll do that all right, dad.”

“I’m not so sure of it,” was his father’s opinion. “You’ve got to prove yourself worthy to spend it. Don’t you think I shall be content to have slaved all these years merely to provide a brainless young idiot with the means of self-indulgence. I leave my money to somebody worthy of me. Understand, sir?—somebody worthy of me.”

Mrs. Grindley commenced a sentence; Mr. Grindley turned his small eyes upon her. The sentence remained unfinished.

“You were about to say something,” her husband reminded her.

Mrs. Grindley said it was nothing.

“If it is anything worth hearing—if it is anything that will assist the discussion, let’s have it.” Mr. Grindley waited. “If not, if you yourself do not consider it worth finishing, why have begun it?”

Mr. Grindley returned to his son and heir. “You haven’t done too well at school—in fact, your school career has disappointed me.”

“I know I’m not clever,” Grindley junior offered as an excuse.

“Why not? Why aren’t you clever?”

His son and heir was unable to explain.

“You are my son—why aren’t you clever? It’s laziness, sir; sheer laziness!”

“I’ll try and do better at Oxford, sir—honour bright I will!”

“You had better,” advised him his father; “because I warn you, your whole future depends upon it. You know me. You’ve got to be a credit to me, to be worthy of the name of Grindley—or the name, my boy, is all you’ll have.”

Old Grindley meant it, and his son knew that he meant it. The old Puritan principles and instincts were strong in the old gentleman—formed, perhaps, the better part of him. Idleness was an abomination to him; devotion to pleasure, other than the pleasure of money-making, a grievous sin in his eyes. Grindley junior fully intended to do well at Oxford, and might have succeeded. In accusing himself of lack of cleverness, he did himself an injustice. He had brains, he had energy, he had character. Our virtues can be our stumbling-blocks as well as our vices. Young Grindley had one admirable virtue that needs, above all others, careful controlling: he was amiability itself. Before the charm and sweetness of it, Oxford snobbishness went down. The Sauce, against the earnest counsel of its own advertisement, was forgotten; the pickles passed by. To escape the natural result of his popularity would have needed a stronger will than young Grindley possessed. For a time the true state of affairs was hidden from the eye of Grindley senior. To “slack” it this term, with the full determination of “swotting” it the next, is always easy; the difficulty beginning only with the new term. Possibly with luck young Grindley might have retrieved his position and covered up the traces of his folly, but for an unfortunate accident. Returning to college with some other choice spirits at two o’clock in the morning, it occurred to young Grindley that trouble might be saved all round by cutting out a pane of glass with a diamond ring and entering his rooms, which were on the ground-floor, by the window. That, in mistake for his own, he should have selected the bedroom