The Three Sisters

rkable animal. It fell away suddenly in the hind-quarters; it had a neck like a giraffe and legs like a spider; but it could jump, if not very like a horse, very like a kangaroo. This creature

r friend pick up his hun

nistreet, "I should say h

humor conceivable enough-if there was any truth in history. It struck Stanistreet that his feeble jest met

d, but he doesn't ride like a tailor. He r

all his love of gossip Sir Peter was a gentleman, and that goose weighed heavily on his

the old fellow's caustic tone. Over bi

s had infected Mrs. Nevill Tyson, a fact which, you may be s

morning, Ty," said he, beaming w

d Tyson,

up-got his eye on the kangaroo, I fancy. I ventured to sugg

nt for me like a lunatic-said you didn't ride like a tailor, you rode like a

e and held Stanistreet

hink I'm going to stand that, you're a greater fool than I took you for.

rivate affairs, he is, ipso facto, a public character." He threw back his

t. You might just as well confide in the town-crier

itterly, "account

n hopeless bewilderment. "W

f the house. I only ask you, so long as y

glance at him that was quite fiendish in its ferocity, and flung himself on the sofa. Sprawling there with his han

Furioso, surely

t my father was a tailor? It wouldn't be funny if it was

your father

of his crime. He was born in an attic on a pile of old breeches. He was a damned dissenter-called himself a Particul

shouldn't he?"

r nothing, and five per cen

e avoided the most distant allusion to it. As it happened, in his ignorance he seemed to have been perpetually blundering up against the circumstance. He went on clu

By your own admission Morley is ac

if h

e is obvious.

ybody care what another fellow's father was? As a matter of fact I neither knew nor

ce I knew you. It supplied the point of all your witticisms that wer

orry for these-these breaches of etiquette. I shall do my best to repair them. That's a specimen of the thing you mean, I imag

el with Stanistreet was a skirmish in the blood-feud of class against class. Tyson was morbidly sensitive on the subject of his birth, but latterly he had almost

p. Faugh! How it reeked of shoddy! Back in the whitewashed chapel, hot with the

d that my Fa

ove in the boo

ad that Jes

s me, Jesu

that Jesus lo

r and a few undergraduates), the world that he suspected of looking down on him, or more intolerable still, of patronizing him, should be compelled to admire him. And the world, being young and generous, did admire him without any strong compulsion. At Oxford the City tailor's son scribbled, talked, debated furiously; the excited utterance of the man of the people, naked and unashamed, passed for the insolence of t

world, vituperated the flesh, stamped on it and stifled it under his decent broadcloth. If it had any rights he denied them. Therefore in the person of his son they reasserted their claim; and young Tyson paid it honorably and conscientiously to the full.

served to separate him forever from his place and his people, from all the h

r had an uncle. His family had effaced itself. Backed by an estate and a good income, there was no reason why its last

used himself with difficulty from his retrospective dream. When he spoke again it wa

to? Lady Morley, for one. My wife," he raised his voic

rd-table; and oddly enough, with all his faults he liked Nevill Tyson. And he had a stronger motive now. Consciously or unconsciously he felt that his friendship for Tyson was a safegu

ages-till to-night. We don't correspond. If we did"-he stopped suddenly-

keeping her na

the door and across the passage,

t introd

n. No doubt everybody knows the facts by t

orical manner, that he lied, it would have been better for that man if he had not spoken. But he forgave Tyson many

ing to keep this up very much long

door-knob. He snarled, showing his teeth li

g to take your word for

door open a

eet foll

h that early train to-morrow, I'd better take

as you

took himself to "