His father said that he was mad; his mother, when she was alive, said that he was “just like his father,” which meant practically the same thing. It was a source of wonderment to all his friends and relations that he had escaped expulsion from school, but escape it he did; nor was he sent down from college, although there he had had some anxious moments on that score. Why he was spared no one knew. It may have been that his ingenuous boyishness appealed too strongly to the authorities, or that they realised that there was not an ounce of vice in his composition.

The fact of the matter was that he was purely a creature of impulse. Once he proposed to an elderly spinster because she told him that she was no longer attractive. Strange to say, she did not take offence, but thanked him for his offer and refused it.

He was twenty-six when he became engaged to Ursula Fenton. He had known her for some six months or so, and they were great pals. She was an orphan, and she supported herself by painting posters and illustrating magazines. She took a great interest in the irresponsible Kenneth, and he went often to her studio in Chelsea, just as a friend. There was so little of the lover in his behaviour that Ursula was considerably surprised when, at ten o’clock one morning, he presented himself at her door, hatless and breathless, and delivered himself of this sentence:

“I say, Ursula, will you marry me?”

Another girl might have been offended by this sudden proposal, but Ursula knew her Kenneth. She drew him into the studio and shut the door. She was a very business-like little lady.

“Sit down and pull yourself together, Kenneth! What on earth do you mean?”

Kenneth ran his fingers through his dishevelled hair, which made it stand upon end in short, crisp curls.

“Marry me—be engaged to me! You know!”

“When did you have this brain-wave?” demanded Ursula.

“This morning. I was having breakfast alone—pater’s got a cold—and it suddenly struck me how topping you’d look sitting opposite me—pouring out the coffee an’ all that. It’s the way your hair curls against your cheek, and the way your nose goes squiggly when you laugh. Ursula, it must have been coming on for months. Do marry me!”

They became engaged, and it was all Ursula could do to prevent Kenneth from dashing off there and then to buy a special licence. She dragged him down from the clouds and reminded him that he must first tell his father. Also she would not marry him for at least six months, because she wasn’t at all sure that he wouldn’t regret the engagement.

Kenneth rushed home to break the news to his father.

Now, old General Mount was a choleric man. He worshipped his son, but there were times when he could be as obstinate as a mule. He wanted tactful handling, but today Kenneth was in no tactful mood. He burst into the general’s bedroom and sat down on the side of the bed. The general sneezed violently and swore. A man labouring under a severe cold in the head is hardly in his most amenable frame of mind.