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320 only smoke or whited wall. I have the highest respect for my sister's genius. I bow before her imagination, and adore it; but remember what Paley said of the imagination—that it is the fertile mother of error. My good sister's delusive faculty seems to have become mamma to an extravagant blunder, which you are lovingly nursing."

"Then you place no reliance on my mother's account?"

"Wait a moment." Mr. Welsh went to the bookcase. "Here is a peerage. Turn up 'Lamerton, Baron,' and see where his lordship was at that time that you were begun to be thought about. He was not in England—had not been there for two or three years. I knew that as well as the author of the peerage, perhaps better; for I was at Orleigh at that time, a fact my sister Marianne forgot when she exhibited to me her magic-lantern slides. I was not then what I am now. I was then thankful for a bit of literary work, and did not turn up my nose at reviewing children's books. I was as glad then to get a chance of putting pen to paper as I now am of getting a holiday from pen and paper."

"And," said Jingles, somewhat staggered by the evidence of the peerage, "you mean to tell me that my mother said—what what—what—was false?"

"Young shaver," said Mr. Welsh, "I read 'Herodotus' in Bohn's translation. I don't even know the letters of the Greek alphabet. I read for professional purposes. I observe that when the father of history comes to a delicate and disputed question, he passes it over with the remark 'I prefer not to express my own opinion thereon.' When you ask me whether what your mother said was true or a lie, I answer with Herodotus, 'I prefer not to express my own opinion thereon.'"

Giles Inglett looked down on the carpet. His lips quivered.

"Young shaver," pursued Mr. Welsh, cheerily, rubbing