little loopline from Wivenhoe to Brightlingsea.

A few moments, and one by one, and in the case of Wederslen and Williams
arm-in-arm, our neighbours hove into view out of the valley, saluted and
passed. We noted the unusually friendly attitude of the two. What was
Williams up to? we wondered. We knew that Williams, the ignoble designer
of _tonneaux_, laboured under the delusion that he could paint. Of
course he could not paint--we were all agreed upon that--but he had
shown us various compositions done during vacation time--blood-red
boulders and glass-green seas. Was it possible that he was convincing
Wederslen that he could paint? We shuddered for Art as we thought of it.
Their wives were not friendly, though, so Bill asserted. We placed our
hopes for Art on that.

For some moments after they were gone, and Confield with his bag had
passed from view down the forest path, we tried to contemplate with
stoical indifference the prospect of seeing Williams hailed by the
servile and blandiloquent Wederslen as a genius. Had he not said of
Hooker that "he was likely, at no distant date, to be seen in all the
collections of note? His rare skill with the burin, his delicate feeling
for nature----" and so on. Of course we all esteemed Hooker and were
glad to see him make good; but really, as Bill remarked, "A man who said
Hooker had a feeling for nature would say anything." It was like
speaking of Antony Van Dyck's feeling for nature. Hooker's Dutch gardens
and Italian ornamental waters, his cypresses like black spearheads, his
eighteenth-century precisians with their flowered waistcoats and high
insteps, were as far from nature as they could conveniently get. So much
for Wederslen. We might have pursued the subject indefinitely had not
our attention been drawn abruptly to the path.

He came uncertainly, this new figure, pausing when he was only half
revealed, as though in doubt of his direction. He wore a Derby hat, and
we saw over his arm a rubber mackintosh. Making up an obviously
unsettled mind, he abjured the path and struck straight across towards
us, with the evident intention of inquiring the way.

There are many conceits by which men may assert their individuality in
dress, even in these days of stereotyped cut. They may adhere by habit
or desire to the uniform of their class, they may preserve their
anonymity even to a cuff-link, yet in some occult way we are apprised of
their personal fancy; we see a last-remaining