pillar in front of the ready-spread bachelor breakfast-table, and by the side of this breakfast-table was a group which would have made any room enticing.  In the crimson damask easy-chair sat Mr. Irwine, with that radiant freshness which he always had when he came from his morning toilet; his finely formed plump white hand was playing along Juno’s brown curly back; and close to Juno’s tail, which was wagging with calm matronly pleasure, the two brown pups were rolling over each other in an ecstatic duet of worrying noises.  On a cushion a little removed sat Pug, with the air of a maiden lady, who looked on these familiarities as animal weaknesses, which she made as little show as possible of observing.  On the table, at Mr. Irwine’s elbow, lay the first volume of the Foulis AEschylus, which Arthur knew well by sight; and the silver coffee-pot, which Carroll was bringing in, sent forth a fragrant steam which completed the delights of a bachelor breakfast.

“Hallo, Arthur, that’s a good fellow!  You’re just in time,” said Mr. Irwine, as Arthur paused and stepped in over the low window-sill.  “Carroll, we shall want more coffee and eggs, and haven’t you got some cold fowl for us to eat with that ham?  Why, this is like old days, Arthur; you haven’t been to breakfast with me these five years.”

“It was a tempting morning for a ride before breakfast,” said Arthur; “and I used to like breakfasting with you so when I was reading with you.  My grandfather is always a few degrees colder at breakfast than at any other hour in the day.  I think his morning bath doesn’t agree with him.”

Arthur was anxious not to imply that he came with any special purpose.  He had no sooner found himself in Mr. Irwine’s presence than the confidence which he had thought quite easy before, suddenly appeared the most difficult thing in the world to him, and at the very moment of shaking hands he saw his purpose in quite a new light.  How could he make Irwine understand his position unless he told him those little scenes in the wood; and how could he tell them without looking like a fool?  And then his weakness in coming back from Gawaine’s, and doing the very opposite of what he intended!  Irwine would think him a shilly-shally fellow ever after.  However, it must come out in an unpremeditated way; the conversation might lead up to it.

“I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day,” said Mr. Irwine.  “No dust has settled on one’s mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.  I always have a favourite book by me at breakfast, and I enjoy the bits I pick up then so much, that regularly every morning it seems to me as if I should certainly become studious again.  But presently Dent brings up a poor fellow who has killed a hare, and when I’ve got through my ‘justicing,’ as Carroll calls it, I’m inclined for a ride round the glebe, and on my way back I meet with the master of the workhouse, who has got a long story of a mutinous pauper to tell me; and so the day goes on, and I’m always the same lazy fellow before evening sets in.  Besides, one wants the stimulus of sympathy, and I have never had that since poor D’Oyley left Treddleston.  If you had stuck to your books well, you rascal, I should have had a pleasanter prospect before me.  But scholarship doesn’t run in your family blood.”