besides those on your wife's nerves. We had saved two thousand
rupees, I remember, against another run home, and it all went like
powder, in the Mirzai expedition; and the run home diminished to a
month in a boarding-house in the hills.

Meanwhile, however, we had begun to correspond with our daughter, in
large round words of one syllable, behind which, of course, was
plain the patient guiding hand of Aunt Emma. One could hear Aunt
Emma suggesting what would be nice to say, trying to instil a little
pale affection for the far-off papa and mamma. There was so little
Cecily and so much Emma--of course, it could not be otherwise--that
I used to take, I fear, but a perfunctory joy in these letters.
When we went home again I stipulated absolutely that she was to
write to us without any sort of supervision--the child was ten.

'But the spelling!' cried Aunt Emma, with lifted eyebrows.

'Her letters aren't exercises,' I was obliged to retort; 'she will
do the best she can.'

We found her a docile little girl, with nice manners, a thoroughly
unobjectionable child. I saw quite clearly that I could not have
brought her up so well; indeed, there were moments when I fancied
that Cecily, contrasting me with her aunts, wondered a little what
my bringing up could have been like. With this reserve of criticism
on Cecily's part, however, we got on very tolerably, largely because
I found it impossible to assume any responsibility towards her, and
in moments of doubt or discipline referred her to her aunts. We
spent a pleasant summer with a little girl in the house whose
interest in us was amusing, and whose outings it was gratifying to