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"What has he got to do with it? Perfect nonsense! What a woman! What a woman! He's a shepherd of souls that—that—that—parson! What does he know about mutton?"

And then my dad seemed to listen to the echo of his voice and, alas, saw the humour of his remark. He sat back and laughed at himself, then got up, flicked the letter, said: "Far better give the boy a chance. I wish my father had let me follow my instincts—" and retired to smoke many cigars and read "Don Quixote" in the Spanish.

But evidently he could not settle. I think, looking back on him, that he tried too much to dismiss things instead of to mend them. He had, nevertheless, quite an ordeal of it dismissing that letter. It came on a Friday and all Saturday he was glum and on Sunday so glum that he spent the forenoon yarning with the stable-boy and the ploughman. To my great delight, from where I sat (glum as he, before the farmhouse) I saw him dancing and snapping his fingers, explaining some Spanish dance to the farm hands. They looked upon this townsman, spending his summer vacation with them, as a "great card." He had spent his younger days partly in Chili, in the nitrate business, partly in the Argentine, and lived a deal in the past. He was now giving them an exhibition of some Spanish dance; and presently he began to sing, in response to some request from the stable-boy, a Spanish song.