gently, as when he played with the children. It was mostly put on, of
course, this false grandiloquence of the prig. His eyes already
twinkled more than he could quite disguise.

'Then we can manage the other school, perhaps, for Frank?' she cried,
and was about to open various flood-gates when he stopped her with a
look of proud happiness that broke down all barriers of further
pretended secrecy.

'Mr. Rogers,' was the low reply, 'has offered to do that for us--as a
start.' The words were leisurely spoken between great puffs of smoke.
'That's what I meant just now by saying that he lived poetry in his
life, you see. Another time you will allow judgment to wait on
knowledge---'

'You dear old humbug,' she cried, cutting short the sentence that
neither of them quite understood, 'I believe you've known this for
weeks---'

'Two hours ago exactly,' he corrected her, and would willingly have
prolonged the scene indefinitely had not his practical better half
prevented him. For she came over, dropped upon her knees beside his
chair, and, putting both arms about his neck, she kissed his foolish
sentences away with all the pride and tenderness that filled her to
the brim. And it pleased Minks hugely. It made him feel, for the
moment at any rate, that he was the hero, not Mr. Henry Rogers.

But he did not show his emotion much. He did not even take his pipe
out. It slipped down sideways into another corner of his wandering
lips. And, while he returned the kiss with equal tenderness and