“Dearman, I have not been so much lately, and I—­”

“That’s what I complain of, my young friend.”

“What?”

“That’s what I complain of!  I have come to protest against your making yourself almost necessary to me, in a sense, and then—­er—­deserting me, in a sense.”

“You are mocking me, Dearman.  If you wish to take advantage of my being half your size and strength to assault me, you——­”

“Not a bit of it, my dear Augustus.  I am in most deadly earnest, as you’ll find if you are contumacious when I make my little proposition.  What I say is this. I have grown to take an interest in you, Augustus. I have been very kind to you and tried to make a better man of you. I have been a sort of mother to you, and you have sworn devotion and gratitude to me. I have reformed you somewhat, and you have admitted to me that I have made another man of you, Augustus, and that you love me for it, you love me with a deep Platonic love, my Augustus, and—­don’t you forget it.”

“I admit that your wife——­”

“Don’t you mention my wife, Augustus, or you and I and that malacca will have a period of great activity.  I was saying that I am disappointed in you, Augustus, and truly grieved to find you so shallow and false.  I asked you to take me on the river to-night and you lied to me and took a very different type of—­er—­person.  Such meanness and ingratitude fairly get me, Augustus.  Now I never asked you to run after me and come and swear I had saved your dirty little soul alive, but since you did it, Augustus, and I have come to take a deep interest in saving the thing—­why, you’ve got to stick it, Augustus—­and if you don’t—­why, then I’ll make you, my dear.”

“Dearman, your wife has been the noblest friend——­”

“Will you come off it, Augustus?  I don’t want to be cruel.  Now look here. I have got accustomed to having you about the house and employing you in those funny little ways in which you are a useful little animal.  I am under no delusion as to the value of that Soul of yours—­but, such as it is, I am determined to save it.  So just you bring it round to tea to-morrow, as usual; and don’t you ever be absent again without my permission.  You began the game and I’ll end it—­when I think fit.  Grand malacca that.”

“Dearman, I will always——­”

“’Course you will.  See you at tea to-morrow, Gussie.  If ever my wife hears of this I’ll kill you painfully.  Bye-Bye.”

Augustus was present at tea next day, and, thenceforth, so regular was he that Mrs. Dearman found, first, that she had been very foolish in thinking that her Brand was slipping back into the fire and, later, that Gussie was a bore and a nuisance.

One day he said in the presence of John:—­

“I can’t keep that golf engagement on Saturday, dear lady, I have to attend a meeting of the Professors, Principal and College Board”.