health resorts of some kind or another.

He was a nervous, irritable man, as unlike Jimmy as it is possible for
two brothers to be.

For the past two years he had been living in Australia. He had
undertaken the voyage at the suggestion of some new doctor whose advice
he had sought, and he had been so ill during the six weeks' voyage
that, so far, he had never been able to summon sufficient pluck to
start home again.

Jimmy had roared with laughter when he heard; he could so well imagine
his brother's disgust and fear. As a matter of fact, it suited Jimmy
very well that the head of the family should be so far removed from
him. He hated supervision; he liked to feel that he had got a free
hand; that he need not go in fear of running up against Horatio
Ferdinand at every street corner.

He read his brother's closely written pages now with a long-suffering
air. Jimmy hated writing letters, and he hated receiving them; most
things bored him in these days; he had been drifting for so long, and
under Cynthia Farrow's tuition he would very likely have finally
drifted altogether into a slack, nothing-to-do man about town, very
little good to himself or anyone else.

Horatio Ferdinand wrote:--


DEAR JAMES,-- (He hated abbreviations; he would never allow people to
call him "Horace"; his writing was cramped and formal like himself.) I