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El Greco the secret which he felt the mysterious painter held
for him. Athelny entered into his humour, and on Sunday
afternoons they made out elaborate itineraries so that Phil-
ip should miss nothing that was noteworthy. To cheat his
impatience Philip began to teach himself Spanish, and in
the deserted sitting-room in Harrington Street he spent an
hour every evening doing Spanish exercises and puzzling
out with an English translation by his side the magnificent
phrases of Don Quixote. Athelny gave him a lesson once a
week, and Philip learned a few sentences to help him on his
journey. Mrs. Athelny laughed at them.
‘You two and your Spanish!’ she said. ‘Why don’t you do
something useful?’
But Sally, who was growing up and was to put up her
hair at Christmas, stood by sometimes and listened in her
grave way while her father and Philip exchanged remarks
in a language she did not understand. She thought her fa-
ther the most wonderful man who had ever existed, and she
expressed her opinion of Philip only through her father’s
commendations.
‘Father thinks a rare lot of your Uncle Philip,’ she re-
marked to her brothers and sisters.
Thorpe, the eldest boy, was old enough to go on the Are-
thusa, and Athelny regaled his family with magnificent
descriptions of the appearance the lad would make when
he came back in uniform for his holidays. As soon as Sally
was seventeen she was to be apprenticed to a dressmaker.
Athelny in his rhetorical way talked of the birds, strong
enough to fly now, who were leaving the parental nest, and