e to do my best, but of all the
men I've ever met in my life--Tinman!--the ridiculous! Pray pardon me;
but the donkey and his looking-glass! The glass was misty! He--as
particular about his reflection in the glass as a poet with his verses!
Advance, retire, bow; and such murder of the Queen's English in the very
presence! If I thought he was going to take his wine with him, I'd have
him arrested for high treason."

"You've chosen, and you know what you best like," said Van Diemen,
pointing his accents--by which is produced the awkward pause, the pitfall
of conversation, and sometimes of amity.

Thus it happened that Mr. Herbert Fellingham journeyed back to London a
day earlier than he had intended, and without saying what he meant to
say.

CHAPTER V

A month later, after a night of sharp frost on the verge of the warmer
days of spring, Mr. Fellingham entered Crikswich under a sky of perfect
blue that was in brilliant harmony with the green downs, the white cliffs
and sparkling sea, and no doubt it was the beauty before his eyes which
persuaded him of his delusion in having taken Annette for a commonplace
girl. He had come in a merely curious mood to discover whether she was
one or not. Who but a commonplace girl would care to reside in Crikswich,
he had asked himself; and now he was full sure that no commonplace girl
would ever have had the idea. Exquisitely simple, she certainly was; but
that may well be a distinction in a young lady whose eyes are expressive.

The sound of sawing attracted him to Crickledon's shop, and the
industrious carpenter soon put him on the tide of affairs.

Crickledon pointed to the house on the beach as the place where Mr. Van
Diemen Smith and his daughter were staying.

"Dear me! and how does he look?" said Fellingham.

"Our town seems to agree with him, sir."

"Well, I must not say any more, I suppose." Fellingham checked his
tongue. "How have they settled that dispute about the chiwal-glass?"

"Mr. Tinman had to give way."

"Really."

"But," Crickledon stopped work, "Mr. Tinman sold him a meadow."

"I see."

"Mr. Smith has been buying a goodish bit of ground here. They tell me
he's about purchasing Elba. He has bought the Crouch. He and Mr. Tinman
are always out together. They're over at Helmstone now. They've been to
London."

"Are they likely to be back to-day?"

"Certain, I should think. Mr. Tinman has to be in London to-morrow."

Crickledon looked. He was no