“The fallacy is that what seems to be play to a mind like Daniel’s, is really seen to be work by a larger mind,” explained Arthur Waldron.  “Sport, for instance, which is the backbone of British character, is a thousand times more important to the nation than spinning yarn; and we, who keep up the great tradition of British sport on the highest possible plane, are doing a great deal more valuable work—­unpaid, mark you—­than mere merchants and people of that kind who toil after money.”

“Of course; but I never yet met a merchant who would see it—­certainly not Daniel.  In fact I’ve got to work—­in his way.”

“D’you mean he’s stopping the allowance?”

“Yes.  At least he’s not renewing it.  He’s offering me a salary if I’ll work.  A jolly good salary, I grant.  I can be just to him, though he can’t to me.  But, if I’m going to draw the salary, I’ve got to learn the business and, in fact, go into it and become a spinner.  Then, at the end of five years, if I shine and really get keen about it and help the show, he’ll take me into partnership.  That’s his offer; and first I told him to go to the devil, and then I changed my mind and, after my aunt had sounded Daniel and found that was his ultimatum, I climbed down.”

“What are you to do?  Surely he won’t chain an open-air man like you to a wretched desk all your time?”

“So I thought; but he didn’t worry about that.  I wanted to go abroad, and combine business with pleasure, and buy the raw material in Russia and India and Italy and so on.  That might have been good enough; but in his rather cold-blooded way, he pointed out that to buy raw material, you wanted to know something about raw material.  He asked me if I knew hemp from flax, and of course I had to say I did not.  So that put the lid on that.  I’ve got to begin where Daniel began ten years ago—­at the beginning—­with this difference, that I get three hundred quid a year.  In fact there’s such a mixture of fairness and unfairness in Daniel’s idea that you don’t know where to have him.”

“What shall you do about it?”

“I tell you I’ve agreed.  I must live, obviously, and I’d always meant to do something some day.  But naturally my ideas were open air, and I thought when I got things going and took a scheme to my father—­for horse-breeding or some useful enterprise—­he would have seen I meant business and come round and planked down.  But Daniel has got no use for horse-breeding, so I must be a spinner—­for the time anyway.”

Estelle ventured to speak.

“But only girls spin,” she said.  “You’d never be able to spin, Ray.”

Raymond laughed.

“Everybody’s got to spin, it seems,” he answered.

“Except the lilies,” declared Estelle gravely. “’They toil not, neither do they spin,’ you know.”

Mr. Waldron regarded his daughter with respect.

“Just imagine,” he said, “at her age.  They’ve made her a member of the Field Botanists’ Club.  Only eleven years old and invited to join a grown-up club!”