you need it the most, and Mackenzie and Anderson say it'll come to
about a hundred and sixty a year.'

'One can do a great deal of good with that much money,' said Ronald
meditatively. 'I mean, after arranging with you, mother, for the
expenses of my maintenance at home, which of course I shall do, as
soon as the pension ceases, and after meeting one's own necessary
expenditure in the way of clothing and so forth. It's more than
any one Christian man ought to spend upon himself, I'm sure.'

'It's not at all too much for a young man in your position in
society, Ronald; but there--I know you'll want to spend half of
it on indiscriminate charity. However, there'll be time enough to
talk about that when you've actually got it, thank goodness.'

Ronald murmured a few words softly to himself, of which Lady Le
Breton only caught the last echo--'laid them down at the apostles'
feet; and distribution was made unto every man according as he had
need.'

'Just like Ernest's communistic notions,' she murmured in return,
half audibly. 'I do declare, between them both, a plain woman hardly
knows whether she's standing on her head or on her heels. I live
in daily fear that one or other of them will be taken up by the
police, for being implicated in some dynamite plot or other, to blow
up the Queen or destroy the Houses of Parliament.' Ronald smiled
again, gently, but answered nothing. 'There's another letter for
you there, though, with the Exmoor coronet upon it. Why don't you
open it? I hope it's an invitation for you to go down and stop at
Dunbude for a week or two. Nothing on earth would do you so much