“I can’t think what has come to Benson” he said to Adrian.

“He seems to have received a fresh legacy of several pounds of lead,” returned the wise youth, and imitating Dr. Clifford’s manner.  “Change is what he wants! distraction! send him to Wales for a month, sir, and let Richard go with him.  The two victims of woman may do each other good.”

“Unfortunately I can’t do without him,” said the baronet.

“Then we must continue to have him on our shoulders all day, and on our chests all night!” Adrian ejaculated.

“I think while he preserves this aspect we won’t have him at the dinner-table,” said the baronet.

Adrian thought that would be a relief to their digestions; and added:  “You know, sir, what he says?”

Receiving a negative, Adrian delicately explained to him that Benson’s excessive ponderosity of demeanour was caused by anxiety for the safety of his master.

“You must pardon a faithful fool, sir,” he continued, for the baronet became red, and exclaimed: 

“His stupidity is past belief!  I have absolutely to bolt my study-door against him.”

Adrian at once beheld a charming scene in the interior of the study, not unlike one that Benson had visually witnessed.  For, like a wary prophet, Benson, that he might have warrant for what he foretold of the future, had a care to spy upon the present:  warned haply by The Pilgrim’s Scrip, of which he was a diligent reader, and which says, rather emphatically:  “Could we see Time’s full face, we were wise of him.”  Now to see Time’s full face, it is sometimes necessary to look through keyholes, the veteran having a trick of smiling peace to you on one cheek and grimacing confusion on the other behind the curtain.  Decency and a sense of honour restrain most of us from being thus wise and miserable for ever.  Benson’s excuse was that he believed in his master, who was menaced.  And moreover, notwithstanding his previous tribulation, to spy upon Cupid was sweet to him.  So he peeped, and he saw a sight.  He saw Time’s full face; or, in other words, he saw the wiles of woman and the weakness of man:  which is our history, as Benson would have written it, and a great many poets and philosophers have written it.

Yet it was but the plucking of the Autumn primrose that Benson had seen:  a somewhat different operation from the plucking of the Spring one:  very innocent!  Our staid elderly sister has paler blood, and has, or thinks she has, a reason or two about the roots.  She is not all instinct.  “For this high cause, and for that I know men, and know him to be the flower of men, I give myself to him!” She makes that lofty inward exclamation while the hand is detaching her from the roots.  Even so strong a self-justification she requires.  She has not that blind glory in excess which her younger sister can gild the longest leap with.  And if, moth-like, she desires the star, she is nervously cautious of