sleeps and eats in order to maintain the strength required for the
performance of committee duties. Her children have always been outside
the sphere of her real interests, but, afflicted, as such women are,
with chronic inflammation of the conscience, she had devoted the most
scrupulous care to their upbringing. She formed herself into a society
for the protection of her own children, and managed them by means of a
committee, which consisted of herself, and of which she was the honorary
secretary. She drew up articles of association and regulations. If Dale
contracted measles, she applied by-law 17. If Janet slapped
Dorothy, by-law 32 was brought into play. When Dale clamoured for
a rocking-horse, she found that the articles of association did not
provide for imaginative equitation. As the children grew up, the
committee had from time to time to revise the articles and submit them
to the general body for approval. There were many meetings before the
new sections relating to a University career for the boy and the coming
out for the girls were satisfactorily drafted. Once given the effect
of law, however, there was no appeal against these provisions. Both
committee and general body were powerless. Dale certainly owed his
methodical habits to his mechanical training, but whence he derived and
how he maintained his exuberance and spontaneity has often puzzled
me. He himself accounts for it on the score of heredity, in that an
ancestress of his married a highwayman who was hanged at Tyburn under
William and Mary.

In person Lady Kynnersley is lean and blanched and grey-haired. She
wears gold spectacles, which stand out oddly against the thin whiteness
of her face; she is still a handsome, distinguished woman, who can have,
when she chooses, a most gracious manner. As I, worldling and jester
though I am, for some mysterious reason have found favour in the lady's
eyes, she manifests this graciousness whenever we foregather. Ergo,