ouse fades from
view, and we turn down into the world's high-road. My little friend is
no longer little now. The short jacket has sprouted tails. The battered
cap, so useful as a combination of pocket-handkerchief, drinking-cup,
and weapon of attack, has grown high and glossy; and instead of a
slate-pencil in his mouth there is a cigarette, the smoke of which
troubles him, for it will get up his nose. He tries a cigar a little
later on as being more stylish--a big black Havanna. It doesn't seem
altogether to agree with him, for I find him sitting over a bucket in
the back kitchen afterward, solemnly swearing never to smoke again.

And now his mustache begins to be almost visible to the naked eye,
whereupon he immediately takes to brandy-and-sodas and fancies himself
a man. He talks about "two to one against the favorite," refers to
actresses as "Little Emmy" and "Kate" and "Baby," and murmurs about his
"losses at cards the other night" in a style implying that thousands
have been squandered, though, to do him justice, the actual amount is
most probably one-and-twopence. Also, if I see aright--for it is always
twilight in this land of memories--he sticks an eyeglass in his eye and
stumbles over everything.

His female relations, much troubled at these things, pray for him (bless
their gentle hearts!) and see visions of Old Bailey trials and halters
as the only possible outcome of such reckless dissipation; and the
prediction of his first school-master, that he would come to a bad end,
assumes the proportions of inspired prophecy.

He has a lordly contempt at this age for the other sex, a blatantly good
opinion of himself, and a sociably patronizing manner toward all the
elderly male friends of the family. Altogether, it must be confessed, he
is somewhat of a nuisance about this time.

It does not last long, though. He falls in love in a little while, and
that soon takes the bounce out of him. I notice his boots are much too
small for him now, and his hair is fearfully and wonderfully arranged.
He reads poetry more than he used, and he keeps a rhyming dictionary in
his bedroom. Every morning Emily Jane finds scraps of torn-up paper on
the floor and reads thereon of "cruel hearts and love's deep darts," of
"beauteous eyes and lovers' sighs," and much more of the old, old song
that lads so love to sing and lassies love to listen to while giving
their dainty heads a toss and pretending never to hear.

The course of love