"Pour passer le temps," suggested Cornish, gaily.

"No, of course not. But papa is really rather anxious about this. He
says it is much the most important thing he has ever had to do
with--and that is saying a good deal, you know. I wish I could remember
the name of it, and of those poor unfortunate people who make
it--whatever it is. It is some stuff, you know, and sounds sticky. Papa
has so many charities, and such long names to them. Aunt Susan says it
is because he was so wild in his youth--but one cannot believe that.
Would you think that papa had been wild in his youth--to look at him
now?"

"Lord, no!" ejaculated White, with pious solidity, throwing back his
shoulders with an air that seemed to suggest a readiness to fight any
man who should hint at such a thing, and he waved the mere thought
aside with a ponderous gesture of the hand.

Joan had, however, already turned to another matter. She was consulting
a diary bound in dark blue morocco.

"Let me see, now," she said. "Papa told me to make an appointment with
you. When can you come?"

Cornish produced a minute engagement-book, and these two busy people
put their heads together in the search for a disengaged moment. Not
only in mind, but in face and manner, they slightly resembled each
other, and might, by the keen-sighted, have been set down at once as
cousins. Both were fair and slightly made, both were quick and clever.
Both faced the world with an air of energetic intelligence that bespoke