sister, for he was ready to take for granted that he should one day
restore the balance. He was a canny and far-seeing youth, with
appetites and aspirations, and he had not a scruple in his
composition. His mother's theory of the happy knack he could pick up
deprived him of the wholesome discipline required to prevent young
idlers from becoming cads. He had, abroad, a casual tutor and a
snatch or two of a Swiss school, but no consecutive study, no
prospect of a university or a degree. It may be imagined with what
zeal, as the years went on, he entered into the pleasantry of there
being no manual so important to him as the massive book of life. It
was an expensive volume to peruse, but Mrs. Stormer was willing to
lay out a sum in what she would have called her premiers frais.
Ethel disapproved--she thought this education far too unconventional
for an English gentleman. Her voice was for Eton and Oxford, or for
any public school (she would have resigned herself) with the army to
follow. But Leolin never was afraid of his sister, and they visibly
disliked, though they sometimes agreed to assist, each other. They
could combine to work the oracle--to keep their mother at her desk.

When she came back to England, telling me she had got all the
continent could give her, Leolin was a broad-shouldered, red-faced
young man, with an immense wardrobe and an extraordinary assurance of
manner. She was fondly obstinate about her having taken the right
course with him, and proud of all that he knew and had seen. He was
now quite ready to begin, and a little while later she told me he HAD
begun. He had written something tremendously clever, and it was
coming out in the Cheapside. I believe it came out; I had no time to
look for it; I never heard anything about it. I took for granted
that if this contribution had passed through his mother's hands it
had practically become a specimen of her own genius, and it was