dull enough to Fitz. A sick cat may touch your heart, but does not
furnish you with lively companionship. Fitz was heartily glad when the
Burtons had gone. He had worked very hard to make things possible for
that absurd baby camel.

"You may call her an absurd baby camel," said his mother, "but it's my
opinion that she is going to be a very great beauty."

"_She!"_ exclaimed Fitz, thinking that the ugliness of Eve might have
unhinged his mother's beauty-loving mind.

"Oh," said his mother, "she's at an age now--poor child! But don't you
remember how the bones of her face--"

"I am trying to forget," said Fitz with a tremendous shudder for the
occasion.




IV

Fitz did not take a degree at Oxford. He left in the middle of his last
term, leaving many friends behind. He stood well, and had been in no
especial difficulty of mischief, and why he left was a mystery. The
truth of the matter is that he had been planning for ten years to leave
Oxford in the very middle of his last term. For upon that date fell his
twenty-first birthday, when he was to be his own man. He spent a few
hours in his mother's house in London. And, of course, she tried to make
him go back and finish, and was very much upset, for her. But Fitz