“And you had to show the young rascal that these tricks wouldn’t do, eh?”

“A child of six?  I don’t think they matter.”

“I’m an old-fashioned father.”

“Nonsense, Willoughby; Rachel knows better.”

Much as Willoughby would doubtless have liked his daughter to praise him she did not; her eyes were unreflecting as water, her fingers still toying with the fossilised fish, her mind absent.  The elder people went on to speak of arrangements that could be made for Ridley’s comfort—­a table placed where he couldn’t help looking at the sea, far from boilers, at the same time sheltered from the view of people passing.  Unless he made this a holiday, when his books were all packed, he would have no holiday whatever; for out at Santa Marina Helen knew, by experience, that he would work all day; his boxes, she said, were packed with books.

“Leave it to me—­leave it to me!” said Willoughby, obviously intending to do much more than she asked of him.  But Ridley and Mr. Pepper were heard fumbling at the door.

“How are you, Vinrace?” said Ridley, extending a limp hand as he came in, as though the meeting were melancholy to both, but on the whole more so to him.

Willoughby preserved his heartiness, tempered by respect.  For the moment nothing was said.

“We looked in and saw you laughing,” Helen remarked.  “Mr. Pepper had just told a very good story.”

“Pish.  None of the stories were good,” said her husband peevishly.

“Still a severe judge, Ridley?” enquired Mr. Vinrace.

“We bored you so that you left,” said Ridley, speaking directly to his wife.

As this was quite true Helen did not attempt to deny it, and her next remark, “But didn’t they improve after we’d gone?” was unfortunate, for her husband answered with a droop of his shoulders, “If possible they got worse.”

The situation was now one of considerable discomfort for every one concerned, as was proved by a long interval of constraint and silence.  Mr. Pepper, indeed, created a diversion of a kind by leaping on to his seat, both feet tucked under him, with the action of a spinster who detects a mouse, as the draught struck at his ankles.  Drawn up there, sucking at his cigar, with his arms encircling his knees, he looked like the image of Buddha, and from this elevation began a discourse, addressed to nobody, for nobody had called for it, upon the unplumbed depths of ocean.  He professed himself surprised to learn that although Mr. Vinrace possessed ten ships, regularly plying between London and Buenos Aires, not one of them was bidden to investigate the great white monsters of the lower waters.

“No, no,” laughed Willoughby, “the monsters of the earth are too many for me!”

Rachel was heard to sigh, “Poor little goats!”

“If it weren’t for the goats there’d be no music, my dear; music depends upon goats,” said her father rather sharply, and Mr. Pepper went on to describe the white, hairless, blind monsters lying curled on the ridges of sand at the bottom of the sea, which would explode if you brought them to the surface, their sides bursting asunder and scattering entrails to the winds when released from pressure, with considerable detail and with such show of knowledge, that Ridley was disgusted, and begged him to stop.