when I took my scanty holiday; for I was in a Government
office where only six weeks were allowed. Arthur was generally away
in the summer. He took Edward Bruce to several friends' houses;
to his own home in Hampshire, now for a long time in the hands of
strangers. He wanted to make him a real Englishman. It was arranged
that he should go to Cambridge in October. He matriculated at
Trinity, Arthur's own college; and he was looking forward with great
delight to the prospect.

I went down to stay at Tredennis for a week in July. I got to the
house through the quiet sultry lanes about the middle of the
afternoon, having started very early from town. As I came up the
little drive I could see through the trees an animated game of
lawn-tennis proceeding on the lawn in front of the house, between two
flannelled combatants. At the sound of the wheels they broke off the
game, and Edward came up to greet me. He was now nearly nineteen, and
had lost none of the beauty of his boyhood; a small brown moustache
which fringed his upper lip being, to my eyes, almost the only sign
of his advancing years. He introduced me to his friend, a young Eton
man, possessed of that frank nonchalance which it is the privilege of
that institution to bestow. I inquired where Arthur was. Edward told
me that he had gone down to the stream for a stroll. "We'll go down
and find him," he said, putting his arm in mine, with that same
demonstrativeness that had always characterized him, and that won
people to him so quickly.

We crossed one or two adjacent fields which sloped down to the
stream, conspicuous by its fringe of alder and hazel; and after
crossing by a gravel-pit, we came on a level reach of it, all stifled
with high water-plants, figwort, and loosestrife, and willow-herb,
and great sprawling docks, till, down by a little runnel where it
took a sudden turn round a shoal of gravel, we came upon the faint
fragrance of a cigarette; then Flora ran forward to meet us; and, on
turning the corner, we found a great long figure lying on the bank,
with hat half pulled over his eyes, gazing dreamily up into the
shifting willow leaves and the blue above.

Our voices, which had been drowned by the sound of the running water,
aroused him, and he sat up, and, on seeing me, got slowly to his feet
with a delightful smile of welcome on his face. "How are you, my dear
man?" he said. "I didn't expect you so early, or I should have been
at home to meet you--in f