CHAPTER IX. 



Victor Bickersdyke preserved a gravity of manner which 

 did him credit under the circumstances. The wheel of 

 fortune had at last turned in his direction, and he felt an 

 inward elation which strongly tempted him to burst into a 

 war whoop, but he forbore to present aught but a solemn 

 countenance. There was no doubt about it, his Aunt 

 Lavinia was in a hole, large enough, deep enough, with 

 slippery sides and crumbling edges. When a person was 

 bound down to undertake an impossibility, or what was 

 virtually an impossibility, and he, Bickersdyke, was the one 

 to be favoured by failure to fulfil the terms, well, then 



" Don't you think a whisk}^ and soda would freshen 

 things up, encourage thought, and drive dull care away ? " 

 he said to Jack Morgan standing at the library window 

 with his hands in his pockets and oppressed by a general 

 feeling of despondency. 



'' There could be no harm in trying," Jack replied good- 

 naturedly ; he had not liked Bickersdyke from the first, and 

 somehow he liked him less now, but it was not in his nature 

 to be churlish. 



Jack felt they — meaning Miss Badsworth, himself and 

 the estate generally — were pounded, and he was reminded 

 of a certain Major Creswell whom he had often seen riding 

 aimlessly up and down the side of a fence trying to find an 

 exit suited to his limited nerve. " He had to go back," he 

 said to himself, but in an audible voice. 



" Who ? " asked Bickersdyke, who had rung the bell. 



" Who ? Oh, Bailey, the lawyer." 



" Damn the lawyer, we can get on without him. By the 

 way, the old man must have been pretty mad." 



57 



