“Primitive person!” said Sidney.  “A paper exists to make a profit.”

“Raphael’s doesn’t,” retorted Addie.

“Of course not,” laughed Sidney.  “It never will, so long as there’s a conscientious editor at the helm.  Raphael flatters nobody and reserves his praises for people with no control of the communal advertisements.  Why, it quite preys upon his mind to think that he is linked to an advertisement canvasser with a gorgeous imagination, who goes about representing to the unwary Christian that the Flag has a circulation of fifteen hundred.”

“Dear me!” said Addie, a smile of humor lighting up her beautiful features.

“Yes,” said Sidney, “I think he salves his conscience by an extra hour’s slumming in the evening.  Most religious folks do their moral book-keeping by double entry.  Probably that’s why he’s not here to-night.”

“It’s too bad!” said Addie, her face growing grave again.  “He comes home so late and so tired that he always falls asleep over his books.”

“I don’t wonder,” laughed Sidney.  “Look what he reads!  Once I found him nodding peacefully over Thomas a Kempis.”

“Oh, he often reads that,” said Addie.  “When we wake him up and tell him to go to bed, he says he wasn’t sleeping, but thinking, turns over a page and falls asleep again.”

They all laughed.

“Oh, he’s a famous sleeper,” Addie continued.  “It’s as difficult to get him out of bed as into it.  He says himself he’s an awful lounger and used to idle away whole days before he invented time-tables.  Now, he has every hour cut and dried—­he says his salvation lies in regular hours.”

“Addie, Addie, don’t tell tales out of school,” said Sidney.

“Why, what tales?” asked Addie, astonished.  “Isn’t it rather to his credit that he has conquered his bad habits?”

“Undoubtedly; but it dissipates the poetry in which I am sure Miss Ansell was enshrouding him.  It shears a man of his heroic proportions, to hear he has to be dragged out of bed.  These things should be kept in the family.”

Esther stared hard at the house.  Her cheeks glowed as if the limelight man had turned his red rays on them.  Sidney chuckled mentally over his insight.  Addie smiled.

“Oh, nonsense.  I’m sure Esther doesn’t think less of him because he keeps a time-table.”

“You forget your friend has what you haven’t—­artistic instinct.  It’s ugly.  A man should be a man, not a railway system.  If I were you, Addie, I’d capture that time-table, erase lecturing and substitute ‘cricketing.’  Raphael would never know, and every afternoon, say at 2 P.M., he’d consult his time-table, and seeing he had to cricket, he’d take up his stumps and walk to Regent’s Park.”

“Yes, but he can’t play cricket,” said Esther, laughing and glad of the opportunity.

“Oh, can’t he?” Sidney whistled.  “Don’t insult him by telling him that.  Why, he was in the Harrow eleven and scored his century in the match with Eton; those long arms of his send the ball flying as if it were a drawing-room ornament.”