ford to dress; dress
makes such a difference. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if his clothes
are English made. That baggy look that isn't really baggy, you know.
When I knew him his people were quite poor. Only a mother and sister.
The father shot himself. People said suicide ran in that family. But
Harry--Henry said that if it did, it was going to stop running. He said
such odd things. I was staying with friends when I met him, at a church
social. One meets all kinds at an affair like that. My friends didn't
ask him to the party they gave for me. For although they were a very
good family, the Chedridges, Henry was almost a hired man at that time,
working for old Dr. Inglis, to put himself through college. His mother
and sister never went out."

"Were they both invalids?"

"Don't be clever, Esther! I mean socially, of course. Jane, run up to my
dresser and look in the second drawer on the right hand side and bring
down my small photo case. I think I have a photo somewhere, not a very
good one, but enough to show how homely he was.... Amy, aren't you going
to eat any breakfast this morning?"

Aunt Amy, who had been following her niece's unusual flow of talk with
fascinated attention, returned with a start to her untasted egg. Esther
tried to eat some toast and choked. In spite of all her resolutions she
felt coldly and bitterly angry. That her mother should dare to gossip
about him like that! That she should call him "ugly," that she should
speak with that air of almost insolent proprietorship of those wonderful
early years long, long before she, Esther, had come into his life at
all, it was unendurable!

Do not smile, sophisticated young person. When you are in love you will
know, only too well, this jealousy of youless years; this tenderness for
photos and trifling remembrances of the youth of the one you love. You
will envy his very mother, who, presumably, knew him fairly well in the
nursery, and that first dreadful picture of him in plaid dress and
plastered hair will seem a sacred relic.

In the meantime you may take my word for it, and try to understand how
Esther felt as she bent, perforce, over the photo of a dark-browed lad
whose very expression was in itself a valid protest against photography.

"Ugly, wasn't he?" asked Mrs. Coombe.

"Very," said Esther.

"Perfectly fierce," said Jane, peering over her shoulder. "Really
fierce, I mean, not slang. He looks as if he would love to bite
somebody."

"The