d-twenty, were
rather gawky young persons, with red hair and a perpetual giggle; in
fact they could not speak without giggling, even if it was to tell you
that somebody was dead. Every now and then Mrs MacTavish would
proclaim, with portentous complacency, that Florrie, or Lizzie, or
Aggie, was "out"--to the awe-struck admiration of her friends; which
meant that the young person referred to had begun to do up her hair in
a sort of bun at the back of her head, and had had her frock let down
a couple of tucks. Austin couldn't bear them, though he was always
scrupulously polite. And the boys were, if anything, less interesting
than the girls. The elder of the two--a freckled young giant named
Jock--was always asking him strange conundrums, such as whether he was
going to put the pot on for the Metropolitan--which conveyed no more
idea to Austin's mind than if he had said it in Chinese; while Sandy,
the younger, used to terrify him out of his wits by shouting out that
Yorkshire had got the hump, or that Jobson was 'not out' for a
century, or that wickets were cheap at the Oval. In fact, the entire
family bored him to extinction, though Aunt Charlotte, who had been an
old school-friend of the mamma, sang their praises perseveringly, and
said that the girls were dears.

Then there was the inevitable vicar, with a wife who piqued herself on
her smart bonnets; a curate, who preached Socialism, wore
knickerbockers, and belonged to the Fabian Society; a few unattached
elderly ladies who had long outlived the reproach of their virginity;
and just two or three other families with nothing particular to
distinguish them one way or another. It may readily be inferred,
therefore, that Austin had not many associates. There was really no
one in the place who interested him in the very least, and the
consequence was that he was generally regarded as unsociable. And so
he was--very unsociable. The companionship of his books, his bicycle,
his flowers and his thoughts was far more precious to him than that of
the silly people who bothered him to join in their vapid diversions
and unseasonable talk, and he rightly acted upon his preference. His
own resources were of such a nature that he never felt alone; and
having but few comrades in the flesh, he wisely courted the society of
those whom, though long since dead, he held in far higher esteem than
all the elderly ladies and curates and MacTavishes who ever lived. His
appetite in literature w