CHAPTER III.



HOW GOOD LUCK KNOCKED AT THE DOOR OF THE MAN IN GREY.



"Louisa!" roared my father down the kitchen stairs, "are you all

asleep? Here have I had to answer the front door myself." Then my

father strode into his office, and the door slammed. My father could

be very angry when nobody was by.



Quarter of an hour later his bell rang with a quick, authoritative

jangle. My mother, who was peeling potatoes with difficulty in

wash-leather gloves, looked at my aunt who was shelling peas. The

bell rang again louder still this time.



"Once for Louisa, twice for James, isn't it?" enquired my aunt.



"You go, Paul," said my mother; "say that Louisa--" but with the words

a sudden flush overspread my mother's face, and before I could lay

down my slate she had drawn off her gloves and had passed me. "No,

don't stop your lessons, I'll go myself," she said, and ran out.



A few minutes later the kitchen door opened softly, and my mother's

hand, appearing through the jar, beckoned to me mysteriously.



"Walk on your toes," whispered my mother, setting the example as she

led the way up the stairs; which after the manner of stairs showed

their disapproval of deception by creaking louder and more often than

under any other circumstances; and in this manner we reached my

parents' bedroom, where, in the old-fashioned wardrobe, relic of

better days, reposed my best suit of clothes, or, to be strictly

grammatical, my better.



Never before had I worn these on a week-day morning, but all

conversation not germane to the question of getting into them quickly

my mother swept aside; and when I was complete, down even to the new

shoes--Bluchers, we called them in those days--took me by the hand,

and together we crept down as we had crept up, silent, stealthy and

alert. My mother led me to the street door and opened it.



"Shan't I want my cap?" I whispered. But my mother only shook her

head and closed the door with a bang; and then the explanation of the

pantomime came to me, for with such "business"--comic, shall I call

it, or tragic?--I was becoming familiar; and, my mother's hand upon my

shoulder, we entered my father's office.



Whether from the fact that so often of an evening--our drawing-room

being reserved always as a show-room in case of chance visitors;

Cowper's poems, open face-downwards on the wobbly loo table; the

half-finished crochet work, suggestive of elegant leisure, thrown

carelessly over the arm of the smaller easy-chair--this office would

become our sitting-room, its books and papers, as things of no

account, being huddled out of sight; or whether from the readiness

with which my father would come out of it at all times to play at

something else--at cricket in the back garden on dry days or ninepins

in the passage on wet, charging back into it again whenever a knock

sounded at the front door, I cannot say. But I know that as a child

it never occurred to me to regard my father's profession as a serious

affair. To me he was merely playing there, surrounded by big books

and bundles of documents, labelled profusely but consisting only of

blank papers; by japanned tin boxes, lettered imposingly, but for the

most part empty. "Sutton Hampden, Esq.," I remember was practically

my mother's work-box. The "Drayton Estates" yielded apparently

nothing but apples, a fruit of which my father was fond; while

"Mortgages" it was not until later in life I discovered had no

connection with poems in manuscript, some in course of correction,

others completed.



Now, as the door opened, he rose and came towards us. His hair stood

up from his head, for it was a habit of his to rumple it as he talked;

and this added to his evident efforts to compose his face into an

expression of businesslike gravity, added emphasis, if such were

needed, to the suggestion of the over long schoolboy making believe.



"This is the youngster," said my father, taking me from my mother, and

passing me on. "Tall for his age, isn't he?"



With a twist of his thick lips, he rolled the evil-smelling cigar he

was smoking from the left corner of his mouth to the right; and held

out a fat and not too clean hand, which, as it closed round mine,

brought to my mind the picture of the walrus in my natural history

book; with the other he flapped me kindly on the head.



"Like 'is mother, wonderfully like 'is mother, ain't 'e?" he observed,

still holding my hand. "And that," he added with a wink of one of his

small eyes towards my father, "is about the 'ighest compliment I can

pay 'im, eh?"



His eyes were remarkably small, but marvellously bright and piercing;

so much so that when he turned them again upon me I tried to think

quickly of something nice about him, feeling sure that he could see

right into me.



"And where are you thinkin' of sendin' 'im?" he continued; "Eton or

'Arrow?"



"We haven't quite made up our minds as yet," replied my father; "at

present we are educating him at home."



"You take my tip," said the fat man, "and learn all you can. Look at

me! If I'd 'ad the opportunity of being a schollard I wouldn't be

here offering your father an extravagant price for doin' my work; I'd

be able to do it myself."



"You seem to have got on very well without it," laughed my father; and

in truth his air of prosperity might have justified greater

self-complacency. Rings sparkled on his blunt fingers, and upon the

swelling billows of his waistcoat rose and sank a massive gold cable.



"I'd 'ave done better with it," he grunted.



"But you look very clever," I said; and though divining with a child's

cuteness that it was desired I should make a favourable impression

upon him, I hoped this would please him, the words were yet

spontaneous.



He laughed heartily, his whole body shaking like some huge jelly.



"Well, old Noel Hasluck's not exactly a fool," he assented, "but I'd

like myself better if I could talk about something else than business,

and didn't drop my aitches. And so would my little gell."



"You have a daughter?" asked my mother, with whom a child, as a bond

of sympathy with the stranger took the place assigned by most women to

disrespectful cooks and incompetent housemaids.



"I won't tell you about 'er. But I'll just bring 'er to see you now

and then, ma'am, if you don't mind," answered Mr. Hasluck. "She don't

often meet gentle-folks, an' it'll do 'er good."



My mother glanced across at my father, but the man, intercepting her

question, replied to it himself.



"You needn't be afraid, ma'am, that she's anything like me," he

assured her quite good-temperedly; "nobody ever believes she's my

daughter, except me and the old woman. She's a little lady, she is.

Freak o' nature, I call it."



"We shall be delighted," explained my mother.



"Well, you will when you see 'er," replied Mr. Hasluck, quite

contentedly.



He pushed half-a-crown into my hand, overriding my parents'

susceptibilities with the easy good-temper of a man accustomed to have

his way in all things.



"No squanderin' it on the 'eathen," was his parting injunction as I

left the room; "you spend that on a Christian tradesman."



It was the first money I ever remember having to spend, that

half-crown of old Hasluck's; suggestions of the delights to be derived

from a new pair of gloves for Sunday, from a Latin grammar, which

would then be all my own, and so on, having hitherto displaced all

less exalted visions concerning the disposal of chance coins coming

into my small hands. But on this occasion I was left free to decide

for myself.



The anxiety it gave me! the long tossing hours in bed! the tramping of

the bewildering streets! Even advice when asked for was denied me.



"You must learn to think for yourself," said my father, who spoke

eloquently on the necessity of early acquiring sound judgment and what

he called "commercial aptitude."



"No, dear," said my mother, "Mr. Hasluck wanted you to spend it as you

like. If I told you, that would be spending it as I liked. Your

father and I want to see what you will do with it."



The good little boys in the books bought presents or gave away to

people in distress. For this I hated them with the malignity the

lower nature ever feels towards the higher. I consulted my aunt Fan.



"If somebody gave you half-a-crown," I put it to her, "what would you

buy with it?"



"Side-combs," said my aunt; she was always losing or breaking her

side-combs.



"But I mean if you were me," I explained.



"Drat the child!" said my aunt; "how do I know what he wants if he

don't know himself. Idiot!"



The shop windows into which I stared, my nose glued to the pane! The

things I asked the price of! The things I made up my mind to buy and

then decided that I wouldn't buy! Even my patient mother began to

show signs of irritation. It was rapidly assuming the dimensions of a

family curse, was old Hasluck's half-crown.



Then one day I made up my mind, and so ended the trouble. In the

window of a small plumber's shop in a back street near, stood on view

among brass taps, rolls of lead piping and cistern requisites, various

squares of coloured glass, the sort of thing chiefly used, I believe,

for lavatory doors and staircase windows. Some had stars in the

centre, and others, more elaborate, were enriched with designs, severe

but inoffensive. I purchased a dozen of these, the plumber, an

affable man who appeared glad to see me, throwing in two extra out of

sheer generosity.



Why I bought them I did not know at the time, and I do not know now.

My mother cried when she saw them. My father could get no further

than: "But what are you going to do with them?" to which I was unable

to reply. My aunt, alone, attempted comfort.



"If a person fancies coloured glass," said my aunt, "then he's a fool

not to buy coloured glass when he gets the chance. We haven't all the

same tastes."



In the end, I cut myself badly with them and consented to their being

thrown into the dust-bin. But looking back, I have come to regard

myself rather as the victim of Fate than of Folly. Many folks have I

met since, recipients of Hasluck's half-crowns--many a man who has

slapped his pocket and blessed the day he first met that "Napoleon of

Finance," as later he came to be known among his friends--but it ever

ended so; coloured glass and cut fingers. Is it fairy gold that he

and his kind fling round? It would seem to be.



Next time old Hasluck knocked at our front door a maid in cap and

apron opened it to him, and this was but the beginning of change. New

oilcloth glistened in the passage. Lace curtains, such as in that

neighbourhood were the hall-mark of the plutocrat, advertised our

rising fortunes to the street, and greatest marvel of all, at least to

my awed eyes, my father's Sunday clothes came into weekday wear, new

ones taking their place in the great wardrobe that hitherto had been

the stronghold of our gentility; to which we had ever turned for

comfort when rendered despondent by contemplation of the weakness of

our outer walls. "Seeing that everything was all right" is how my

mother would explain it. She would lay the lilac silk upon the bed,

fondly soothing down its rustling undulations, lingering lovingly over

its deep frosted flounces of rich Honiton. Maybe she had entered the

room weary looking and depressed, but soon there would proceed from

her a gentle humming as from some small winged thing when the sun

first touches it and warms it, and sometimes by the time the Indian

shawl, which could go through a wedding ring, but never would when it

was wanted to, had been refolded and fastened again with the great

cameo brooch, and the poke bonnet, like some fractious child, shaken

and petted into good condition, she would be singing softly to

herself, nodding her head to the words: which were generally to the

effect that somebody was too old and somebody else too bold and

another too cold, "so he wouldn't do for me;" and stepping lightly as

though the burden of the years had fallen from her.



One evening--it was before the advent of this Hasluck--I remember

climbing out of bed, for trouble was within me. Creatures,

indescribable but heavy, had sat upon my chest, after which I had

fallen downstairs, slowly and reasonably for the first few hundred

flights, then with haste for the next million miles or so, until I

found myself in the street with nothing on but my nightshirt.

Personally, I was shocked, but nobody else seemed to mind, and I

hailed a two-penny 'bus and climbed in. But when I tried to pay I

found I hadn't any pockets, so I jumped out and ran away and the

conductor came after me. My feet were like lead, and with every step

he gained on me, till with a scream I made one mighty effort and

awoke.



Feeling the need of comfort after these unpleasant but by no means

unfamiliar experiences, I wrapped some clothes round me and crept

downstairs. The "office" was dark, but to my surprise a light shone

from under the drawing-room door, and I opened it.



The candles in the silver candlesticks were lighted, and in state, one

in each easy-chair, sat my father and mother, both in their best

clothes; my father in the buckled shoes and the frilled shirt that I

had never seen him wear before, my mother with the Indian shawl about

her shoulders, and upon her head the cap of ceremony that reposed

three hundred and sixty days out of the year in its round wicker-work

nest lined with silk. They started guiltily as I pushed open the

door, but I congratulate myself that I had sense enough--or was it

instinct--to ask no questions.



The last time I had seen them, three hours ago, they had been engaged,

the lights carefully extinguished, cleaning the ground floor windows,

my father the outside, my mother within, and it astonished me the

change not only in their appearance, but in their manner and bearing,

and even in their very voices. My father brought over from the

sideboard the sherry and sweet biscuits and poured out and handed a

glass to my mother, and he and my mother drank to each other, while I

between them ate the biscuits, and the conversation was of Byron's

poems and the great glass palace in Hyde Park.



I wonder am I disloyal setting this down? Maybe to others it shows

but a foolish man and woman, and that is far from my intention. I

dwell upon such trifles because to me the memory of them is very

tender. The virtues of our loved ones we admire, yet after all 'tis

but what we expected of them: how could they do otherwise? Their

failings we would forget; no one of us is perfect. But over their

follies we love to linger, smiling.



To me personally, old Hasluck's coming and all that followed thereupon

made perhaps more difference than to any one else. My father now was

busy all the day; if not in his office, then away in the grim city of

the giants, as I still thought of it; while to my mother came every

day more social and domestic duties; so that for a time I was left

much to my own resources.



Rambling--"bummelling," as the Germans term it--was my bent. This my

mother would have checked, but my father said:



"Don't molly-coddle him. Let him learn to be smart."



"I don't think the smart people are always the nicest," demurred my

mother. "I don't call you at all 'smart,' Luke."



My father appeared surprised, but reflected.



"I should call myself smart--in a sense," he explained, after

consideration.



"Perhaps you are right, dear," replied my mother; "and of course boys

are different from girls."



Sometimes I would wander Victoria Park way, which was then surrounded

by many small cottages in leafy gardens; or even reach as far as

Clapton, where old red brick Georgian houses still stood behind high

palings, and tall elms gave to the wide road on sunny afternoons an

old-world air of peace. But such excursions were the exception, for

strange though it may read, the narrow, squalid streets had greater

hold on me. Not the few main thoroughfares, filled ever with a dull,

deep throbbing as of some tireless iron machine; where the endless

human files, streaming ever up and down, crossing and recrossing,

seemed mere rushing chains of flesh and blood, working upon unseen

wheels; but the dim, weary, lifeless streets--the dark, tortuous

roots, as I fancied them, of that grim forest of entangled brick.

Mystery lurked in their gloom. Fear whispered from behind their

silence. Dumb figures flitted swiftly to and fro, never pausing,

never glancing right nor left. Far-off footsteps, rising swiftly into

sound, as swiftly fading, echoed round their lonely comers. Dreading,

yet drawn on, I would creep along their pavements as through some city

of the dead, thinking of the eyes I saw not watching from the thousand

windows; starting at each muffled sound penetrating the long, dreary

walls, behind which that close-packed, writhing life lay hid.



One day there came a cry from behind a curtained window. I stood

still for a moment and then ran; but before I could get far enough

away I heard it again, a long, piercing cry, growing fiercer before it

ceased; so that I ran faster still, not heeding where I went, till I

found myself in a raw, unfinished street, ending in black waste land,

bordering the river. I stopped, panting, wondering how I should find

my way again. To recover myself and think I sat upon the doorstep of

an empty house, and there came dancing down the road with a curious,

half-running, half-hopping step--something like a water wagtail's--a

child, a boy about my own age, who, after eyeing me strangely sat down

beside me.



We watched each other for a few minutes; and I noticed that his mouth

kept opening and shutting, though he said nothing. Suddenly, edging

closer to me, he spoke in a thick whisper. It sounded as though his

mouth were full of wool.



"Wot 'appens to yer when yer dead?"



"If you're good you go to Heaven. If you're bad you go to Hell."



"Long way off, both of 'em, ain't they?"



"Yes. Millions of miles."



"They can't come after yer? Can't fetch yer back again?"



"No, never."



The doorstep that we occupied was the last. A yard beyond began the

black waste of mud. From the other end of the street, now growing

dark, he never took his staring eyes for an instant.



"Ever seen a stiff 'un--a dead 'un?"



"No."



"I 'ave--stuck a pin into 'im. 'E never felt it. Don't feel anything

when yer dead, do yer?"



All the while he kept swaying his body to and fro, twisting his arms

and legs, and making faces. Comical figures made of ginger-bread,

with quaintly curved limbs and grinning features, were to be bought

then in bakers' shops: he made me hungry, reminding me of such.



"Of course not. When you are dead you're not there, you know. Our

bodies are but senseless clay." I was glad I remembered that line. I

tried to think of the next one, which was about food for worms; but it

evaded me.



"I like you," he said; and making a fist, he gave me a punch in the

chest. It was the token of palship among the youth of that

neighbourhood, and gravely I returned it, meaning it, for friendship

with children is an affair of the instant, or not at all, and I knew

him for my first chum.



He wormed himself up.



"Yer won't tell?" he said.



I had no notion what I was not to tell, but our compact demanded that

I should agree.



"Say 'I swear.'"



"I swear."



The heroes of my favourite fiction bound themselves by such like

secret oaths. Here evidently was a comrade after my own heart.



"Good-bye, cockey."



But he turned again, and taking from his pocket an old knife, thrust

it into my hand. Then with that extraordinary hopping movement of his

ran off across the mud.



I stood watching him, wondering where he could be going. He stumbled

a little further, where the mud began to get softer and deeper, but

struggling up again, went hopping on towards the river.



I shouted to him, but he never looked back. At every few yards he

would sink down almost to his knees in the black mud, but wrenching

himself free would flounder forward. Then, still some distance from

the river, he fell upon his face, and did not rise again. I saw his

arms beating feebler and feebler as he sank till at last the oily

slime closed over him, and I could detect nothing but a faint heaving

underneath the mud. And after a time even that ceased.



It was late before I reached home, and fortunately my father and

mother were still out. I did not tell any one what I had seen, having

sworn not to; and as time went on the incident haunted me less and

less until it became subservient to my will. But of my fancy for

those silent, lifeless streets it cured me for the time. From behind

their still walls I would hear that long cry; down their narrow vistas

see that writhing figure, like some animated ginger-bread, hopping,

springing, falling.



Yet in the more crowded streets another trouble awaited me, one more

tangible.



Have you ever noticed a pack of sparrows round some crumbs perchance

that you have thrown out from your window? Suddenly the rest of the

flock will set upon one. There is a tremendous Lilliputian hubbub, a

tossing of tiny wings and heads, a babel of shrill chirps. It is

comical.



"Spiteful little imps they are," you say to yourself, much amused.



So I have heard good-tempered men and women calling out to one another

with a laugh.



"There go those young devils chivvying that poor little beggar again;

ought to be ashamed of theirselves."



But, oh! the anguish of the poor little beggar! Can any one who has

not been through it imagine it! Reduced to its actualities, what was

it? Gibes and jeers that, after all, break no bones. A few pinches,

kicks and slaps; at worst a few hard knocks. But the dreading of it

beforehand! Terror lived in every street, hid, waiting for me, round

each corner. The half-dozen wrangling over their marbles--had they

seen me? The boy whistling as he stood staring into the print shop,

would I get past him without his noticing me; or would he, swinging

round upon his heel, raise the shrill whoop that brought them from

every doorway to hunt me?



The shame, when caught at last and cornered: the grinning face that

would stop to watch; the careless jokes of passers-by, regarding the

whole thing but as a sparrows' squabble: worst of all, perhaps, the

rare pity! The after humiliation when, finally released, I would dart

away, followed by shouted taunts and laughter; every eye turned to

watch me, shrinking by; my whole small carcass shaking with dry sobs

of bitterness and rage!



If only I could have turned and faced them! So far as the mere

bearing of pain was concerned, I knew myself brave. The physical

suffering resulting from any number of stand-up fights would have been

trivial compared with the mental agony I endured. That I, the comrade

of a hundred heroes--I, who nightly rode with Richard Coeur de Lion,

who against Sir Lancelot himself had couched a lance, and that not

altogether unsuccessful, I to whom all damsels in distress were wont

to look for succour--that I should run from varlets such as these!



My friend, my bosom friend, good Robin Hood! how would he have behaved

under similar circumstances? how Ivanhoe, my chosen companion in all

quests of knightly enterprise? how--to come to modern times--Jack

Harkaway, mere schoolboy though he might be? Would not one and all

have welcomed such incident with a joyous shout, and in a trice have

scattered to the winds the worthless herd?



But, alas! upon my pale lips the joyous shout sank into an unheard

whisper, and the thing that became scattered to the wind was myself,

the first opening that occurred.



Sometimes, the blood boiling in my veins, I would turn, thinking to go

back and at all risk defying my tormentors, prove to myself I was no

coward. But before I had retraced my steps a dozen paces, I would see

in imagination the whole scene again before me: the laughing crowd,

the halting passers-by, the spiteful, mocking little faces every way I

turned; and so instead would creep on home, and climbing stealthily up

into my own room, cry my heart out in the dark upon my bed.



Until one blessed day, when a blessed Fairy, in the form of a small

kitten, lifted the spell that bound me, and set free my limbs.



I have always had a passionate affection for the dumb world, if it be

dumb. My first playmate, I remember, was a water rat. A stream ran

at the bottom of our garden; and sometimes, escaping the vigilant eye

of Mrs. Fursey, I would steal out with my supper and join him on the

banks. There, hidden behind the osiers, we would play at banquets,

he, it is true, doing most of the banqueting, and I the make-believe.

But it was a good game; added to which it was the only game I could

ever get him to play, though I tried. He was a one-ideaed rat.



Later I came into the possession of a white specimen all my own. He

lived chiefly in the outside breast pocket of my jacket, in company

with my handkerchief, so that glancing down I could generally see his

little pink eyes gleaming up at me, except on very cold days, when it

would be only his tail that I could see; and when I felt miserable,

somehow he would know it, and, swarming up, push his little cold snout

against my ear. He died just so, clinging round my neck; and from

many of my fellow-men and women have I parted with less pain. It

sounds callous to say so; but, after all, our feelings are not under

our own control; and I have never been able to understand the use of

pretending to emotions one has not. All this, however, comes later.

Let me return now to my fairy kitten.



I heard its cry of pain from afar, and instinctively hastened my

steps. Three or four times I heard it again, and at each call I ran

faster, till, breathless, I arrived upon the scene, the opening of a

narrow court, leading out of a by-street. At first I saw nothing but

the backs of a small mob of urchins. Then from the centre of them

came another wailing appeal for help, and without waiting for any

invitation, I pushed my way into the group.



What I saw was Hecuba to me--gave me the motive and the cue for

passion, transformed me from the dull and muddy-mettled little

John-a-dreams I had been into a small, blind Fury. Pale Thought, that

mental emetic, banished from my system, I became the healthy,

unreasoning animal, and acted as such.



From my methods, I frankly admit, science was absent. In simple,

primitive fashion that would have charmed a Darwinian disciple to

observe, I "went for" the whole crowd. To employ the expressive idiom

of the neighbourhood, I was "all over it and inside." Something clung

about my feet. By kicking myself free and then standing on it I

gained the advantage of quite an extra foot in height; I don't know

what it was and didn't care. I fought with my arms and I fought with

my legs; where I could get in with my head I did. I fought whatever

came to hand in a spirit of simple thankfulness, grateful for what I

could reach and indifferent to what was beyond me.



That the "show"--if again I may be permitted the local idiom--was not

entirely mine I was well aware. That not alone my person but my

property also was being damaged in the rear became dimly conveyed to

me through the sensation of draught. Already the world to the left of

me was mere picturesque perspective, while the growing importance of

my nose was threatening the absorption of all my other features.

These things did not trouble me. I merely noted them as phenomena and

continued to punch steadily.



Until I found that I was punching something soft and yet unyielding.

I looked up to see what this foreign matter that thus mysteriously had

entered into the mixture might be, and discovered it to be a

policeman. Still I did not care. The felon's dock! the prison cell!

a fig for such mere bogies. An impudent word, an insulting look, and

I would have gone for the Law itself. Pale Thought--it must have been

a livid green by this time--still trembled at respectful distance from

me.



Fortunately for all of us, he was not impertinent, and though he spoke

the language of his order, his tone disarmed offence.



"Now, then. Now, then. What is all this about?"



There was no need for me to answer. A dozen voluble tongues were

ready to explain to him; and to explain wholly in my favour. This

time the crowd was with me. Let a man school himself to bear

dispraise, for thereby alone shall he call his soul his own. But let

no man lie, saying he is indifferent to popular opinion. That was my

first taste of public applause. The public was not select, and the

applause might, by the sticklers for English pure and undefiled, have

been deemed ill-worded, but to me it was the sweetest music I had ever

heard, or have heard since. I was called a "plucky little devil," a

"fair 'ot 'un," not only a "good 'un," but a "good 'un" preceded by

the adjective that in the East bestows upon its principal every

admirable quality that can possibly apply. Under the circumstances it

likewise fitted me literally; but I knew it was intended rather in its

complimentary sense.



Kind, if dirty, hands wiped my face. A neighbouring butcher presented

me with a choice morsel of steak, not to eat but to wear; and I found

it, if I may so express myself without infringing copyright, "grateful

and comforting." My enemies had long since scooted, some of them, I

had rejoiced to notice, with lame and halting steps. The mutilated

kitten had been restored to its owner, a lady of ample bosom, who,

carried beyond judgment by emotion, publicly offered to adopt me on

the spot. The Law suggested, not for the first time, that everybody

should now move on; and slowly, followed by feminine commendation

mingled with masculine advice as to improved methods for the future, I

was allowed to drift away.



My bones ached, my flesh stung me, yet I walked as upon air.

Gradually I became conscious that I was not alone. A light, pattering

step was trying to keep pace with me. Graciously I slacked my speed,

and the pattering step settled down beside me. Every now and again

she would run ahead and then turn round to look up into my face, much

as your small dog does when he happens not to be misbehaving himself

and desires you to note the fact. Evidently she approved of me. I

was not at my best, as far as appearance was concerned, but women are

kittle cattle, and I think she preferred me so. Thus we walked for

quite a long distance without speaking, I drinking in the tribute of

her worship and enjoying it. Then gaining confidence, she shyly put

her hand into mine, and finding I did not repel her, promptly assumed

possession of me, according to woman's way.



For her age and station she must have been a person of means, for

having tried in vain various methods to make me more acceptable to

followers and such as having passed would turn their heads, she said:



"I know, gelatines;" and disappearing into a sweetstuff shop, returned

with quite a quantity. With these, first sucked till glutinous, we

joined my many tatters. I still attracted attention, but felt warmer.



She informed me that her name was Cissy, and that her father's shop

was in Three Colt Street. I informed her that my name was Paul, and

that my father was a lawyer. I also pointed out to her that a lawyer

is much superior in social position to a shopkeeper, which she

acknowledged cheerfully. We parted at the corner of the Stainsby

Road, and I let her kiss me once. It was understood that in the

Stainsby Road we might meet again.



I left Eliza gaping after me, the front door in her hand, and ran

straight up into my own room. Robinson Crusoe, King Arthur, The Last

of the Barons, Rob Roy! I looked them all in the face and was not

ashamed. I also was a gentleman.



My mother was much troubled when she saw me, but my father, hearing

the story, approved.



"But he looks so awful," said my mother. "In this world," said my

father, "one must occasionally be aggressive--if necessary, brutal."



My father would at times be quite savage in his sentiments.