“Oh, Adrian, your father will be so vexed!” said Mrs. Binns, almost in tears. “And we’ve hardly any coal left. . .”
    “We’ve enough for one fire, at any rate,” said Adrian, with masculine disregard for the difficul­ties of the future. “And as for father — this is my fire. I shall light it, and take all the responsi­bility and the blame. So — that’s that, Mummy!”
    He was an inexperienced fire-layer, and it took him a long time and was very badly done in the end, but he rejected all help or advice, and worked doggedly away until a reluctant little flame began to creep and wind among his edifice of wood and paper. Mrs. Binns sat with folded hands watching, not remonstrating any more. She had been accustomed for so many years to bow to masculine authority, and this, she had suddenly discovered, was a man — not merely the boy her son any more.
    “There!” said Adrian, getting up in triumph with very black hands and a well-grimed face.
    “It’s smoking very much,” Cynthia observed.
    “The chimney’s damp,” said Adrian profes­sionally.
    The front gate clanged, and Mrs. Binns turned pale where she sat.
    “Yes, it is,” said Adrian, with that obstinate chin stuck out again. “Now, this is my business and no one else’s. Run away, please, both of you.”
    Mr. Binns, opening the front door, was greeted in two unexpected ways. The last glimpses of his wife and daughter were whisking upstairs, and a choking blast of smoke greeted his nostrils from an unexpected direction.
    “Where is that smoke coming from? — the drawing-room?”
    “Yes,” said Adrian, head up and chin out. “I lighted it. My mother was cold.”
    “You lighted the drawing-room fire?” Mr. Binns roared. “In September?”
    “Yes. My mother was cold,” Adrian repeated.
    Mr. Binns dashed open the door, and stood furiously regarding the fireplace: not a very pleasant sight, truth to tell, for the smoke was beating down into the room in great puffs, and it was almost impossible to see anything — a very trying circumstance for Adrian.
    “I think the chimney must have got blocked in some way,” he said rather miserably, going forward into the reek.
    “Leave the thing alone!” shouted Mr. Binns. “Possibly it will have the sense to go out? Leave ¾ ”
    A fresh waft of smoke fairly choked him and drove him out. Adrian, with dismay, heard his angry feet ascending the stairs.
    “Yes, he’s gone to worry Mummy about it, of course,” said Cynthia, coming in a moment later. “Adrian, what a smother! What is it? Can’t you do anything?”
    “There is something up the chimney,” Adrian replied in a smoke-muffled voice, raking with the poker and peering up with smarting eyes. “It looks like newspaper . . . You don’t stuff it up in the summer, do you?”
    “Of course not,” said Cynthia hygienically. “Some people do, I know, to keep soot or rain from falling down, but we never do such a fuggy thing.”
    “Here it comes, anyhow — and, whoever put it there?” said Adrian. “And it is newspaper, whatever you say, my dear . . . Why . . .”
    A clumsy, heavy something fell down from its lodgement in the chimney, bringing with it a little smother of soot. The smoke, relieved to find its proper outlet, went promptly upwards. The room began very slowly to clear.
    “What on earth is it?” Cynthia cried, peering. “It looks like a parcel — but who would possibly poke a parcel up the chimney!”
    “It . . . is . . .”
    Adrian’s voice died away queerly.
    “Adrian!” Cynthia cried aghast, looking at him, white to the lips, and gasping a little.
    “I’m . . . sorry, Cynthia . . . You know what a fool I am . . . but there’s blood on it.”
    “Blood? Nonsense!” Cynthia cried sharply. “That horrid accident at Windsor has upset you. How could there be blood on it?”
    But she, too, turned a little pale as she peered through the thinning smoke at the parcel which had fallen down the chimney; a very unpre­possessing parcel, it must be owned, damp and darkly stained and smeared with soot.
    “I’ll undo it and see what it is,” she offered valiantly.
    “You’re a brick, Cynthia . . . I wish I wasn’t such a fool!”
    “Go and look out of the window till I’ve un­done it,” Cynthia ordered him.
    Adrian obeyed, with a shame-faced thankful­ness, turning back again in a moment, however, at a shriek of horror.
    “What is it?”
    “Don’t look — for goodness sake, don’t look!”

*     *     *