Nesta said:  ’Do you know, Skips, we saw a grand exhibition of fencing in
Paris.’

He sighed.  ’Ladies can look on at fencing! foils and masks!  Captain Dartrey Fenellan has shown me, and says, the French are our masters at it.’  He bowed constrainedly to mademoiselle.

‘You box, M. Skepsey!’ she said.

His melancholy increased:  ’Much discouragement from Government, Society!  If ladies . . . but I do not venture.  They are not against Games.  But these are not a protection . . . to them, when needed; to the country.  The country seems asleep to its position.  Mr. Durance has remarked on it:—­though I would not always quote Mr. Durance . . . indeed, he says, that England has invested an Old Maid’s All in the Millennium, and is ruined if it delays to come.  “Old Maid,” I do not see.  I do not—­if I may presume to speak of myself in the same breath with so clever a gentleman, agree with Mr. Durance in everything.  But the chest-measurement of recruits, the stature of the men enlisted, prove that we are losing the nursery of our soldiers.’

’We are taking them out of the nursery, Skips, if you ’re for quoting Captain Dartrey,’ said Nesta.  ’We’ll never haul down our flag, though, while we have him!’

‘Ah!  Captain Dartrey!’ Skepsey was refreshed by the invocation of the name.

A summons to his master’s presence cut short something he was beginning to say about Captain Dartrey.

CHAPTER XVI

ACCOUNTS FOR SKEPSEY’S MISCONDUCT, SHOWING HOW IT AFFECTED NATALY

His master opened on the bristling business.

’What’s this, of your name in the papers, your appearing before a magistrate, and a fine?  Tell the tale shortly.’

Skepsey fell upon his attitude for dialectical defence the modest form of the two hands at rolling play and the head deferentially sidecast.  But knowing that he had gratified his personal tastes in the act of serving his master’s interests, an interfusion of sentiments plunged him into self-consciousness; an unwonted state with him, clogging to a simple story.

’First, sir, I would beg you to pardon the printing of your name beside mine . . .’

‘Tush:  on with you.’

’Only to say, necessitated by the circumstances of the case.  I read, that there was laughter in the court at my exculpation of my conduct—­as I have to call it; and there may have been.  I may have expressed myself . . . .  I have a strong feeling for the welfare of the country.’

’So, it seems, you said to the magistrate.  Do you tell me, that the cause of your gross breach of the law, was a consideration for the welfare of the country?  Run on the facts.’

‘The facts—­I must have begun badly, sir.’  Skepsey rattled the dry facts in his head to right them.  From his not having begun well, they had become dry as things underfoot.  It was an error to have led off with the sentiments.  ’Two very, two very respectable persons—­respectable—­were desirous to witness a short display of my, my system, I would say; of my science, they call it.’