Mrs. Grinstead considered whether to try to make him less conceited about it, and show him his want of truth.  She consulted his uncle about it, showing the newspaper, and telling, and causing Gerald to tell, the history of the accident, which Clement had not been fit to hear all the day before.

He was still in bed, but quite ready to attend to anything, and he laughed over the account, which she illustrated by the discoveries she had made from the united witnesses.

“And is it not delightful to see for once what Gerald really is?” she said.

“Yes, he seems to have behaved gallantly,” said his uncle; “and I won’t say just what might have been expected.”

“One does expect something of an Underwood,” she said.

“Little Merrifield too, who saw the danger coming, deserves more honour than he seems to have taken to himself.”

“Yes, he accepted severity from that stern father of his, who seems very sorry for it now.  It is curious how those boys’ blood comes out in the matter—-chasser de race.”

“You must allow something for breeding.  Fergus had not been the idol of a mother and sisters, and Gerald remembered his father in danger.”

“Oh, I can never be glad enough that he has that remembrance of him!  How like him he grows!  That unconscious imitation is so curious.”

“Yes, the other day, when I had been dozing, I caught myself calling out that he was whistling ‘Johnny Cope’ so loud that he would be heard in the shop.”

“He seems to be settling down more happily here than I expected.  I sometimes wonder if there is any attraction at Clipstone.”

“No harm if there were, except—-”

“Except what?  Early marriage might be the very best thing.”

“Perhaps, though sometimes I doubt whether it is well for a man to have gone through the chief hopes and crises of life so soon.  He looks out for fresh excitement.”

“There are so many stages in life,” said Geraldine, sighing.  “And with all his likenesses, Gerald is quite different from any of you.”

“So I suppose each generation feels with those who succeed it.  Nor do I feel as if I understood the Universities to-day as I did Cambridge thought of old.  We can do nothing but wait and pray, and put out a hand where we see cause.”

“Where we see!  It is the not seeing that is so trying.  The being sure that there is more going on within than is allowed to meet one’s eye, and that one is only patronized as an old grandmother—-quite out of it.”

“I think the conditions of life and thought are less simple than in our day.”

“And to come to the present.  What is to be done about Adrian-—the one who was not a hero, though he made himself out so?”

“Probably he really thought so.  He is a mere child, you know, and it was his first adventure, before he has outgrown the days of cowardice.”

“He need not have told stories.”