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Rh this, and continued talking volubly in order to keep Edgar's mind occupied till it was finished.

"Perhaps it is because you are so extremely efficient," he said. "You lead such a neat life. Things happen as you intend. Yet I don't believe you get any really keen satisfaction out of any of them. You always get all you want without wanting it very badly, whereas, though most people, on the whole, get what they want, they have to want it very badly first. Finally, I observe with extreme satisfaction that you are half-way through your second cigarette after lunch. Thank God you have done what you didn't intend, and I needn't go on feverishly jawing any more. I was only keeping your mind occupied."

Brayton did the most consistent thing possible, and threw the rest of it away.

"Brute!" he said without annoyance; "and as you won't come in to Brixham, I shall go without you. I shall be back by six, and we can put in an hour's fishing before dinner. I've been here a fortnight, and I haven't been to the river yet. But I really think that I've got through all the business now. It is so much better to do what one has to do first, and what one likes afterwards."

This was a somewhat sententious close, but it appeared to him to be rather liberal than otherwise, and, to save trouble, he walked down the terrace to go to the stables, rather than ring the bell to have the motor sent round. The servants, like himself, had been somewhat overworked during this last fortnight, for, with the sound maxim that it is better to see things done than to give absent orders about them, he had come down a fortnight before to a spidery and disordered house rather than command the dissolution of spider and the restoration of order from a distance. There had been a great deal to do; and it was creditable that so much had already been done. The house, at any rate, was habitable again after a period of prolonged neglect, during which only a room or two had been used, while the rest had been left for a large staff of servants, spoiled by the want of supervision, to deal with as they chose. They had chosen to deal with it very badly, and Charlie's advice, "Sack the lot," had been, on the whole, complied with, though differently phrased. Brayton had, in fact, sacked the lot, but he had sacked them severally, after conviction. Though a clean sweep had been made, the cleaning, so to speak, had been done in bits, and the new household had been worked to the limits of their capacity in restoring the neglect