ce girls enough, very like other young ladies in other
country towns, content with the teaching of their parents, reading the
Bible every morning in their bedrooms, and sitting every Sunday in church
amongst the well-dressed "sheep" on the right hand. It was not their
fault if they failed to satisfy the ideal of an enthusiastic dreamy boy,
and indeed, they would have thought his feigned woman immodest, absurdly
sentimental, a fright ("never wears stays, my dear") and _horrid_.

At first he was a good deal grieved at the loss of that charming tender
woman, the work of his brain. When the Miss Dixons went haughtily by with
a scornful waggle, when the Miss Gervases passed in the wagonette
laughing as the mud splashed him, the poor fellow would look up with a
face of grief that must have been very comic; "like a dying duck," as
Edith Gervase said. Edith was really very pretty, and he would have liked
to talk to her, even about fox-terriers, if she would have listened. One
afternoon at the Dixons' he really forced himself upon her, and with all
the obtuseness of an enthusiastic boy tried to discuss the _Lotus Eaters_
of Tennyson. It was too absurd. Captain Kempton was making signals to
Edith all the time, and Lieutenant Gatwick had gone off in disgust, and
he had promised to bring her a puppy "by Vick out of Wasp." At last the
poor girl could bear it no longer:

"Yes, it's very sweet," she said at last. "When did you say you were
going to London, Mr. Taylor?"

It was about the time that his disappointment became known to everybody,
and the shot told. He gave her a piteous look and slunk off, "just like
the dog when he's had a whipping," to use Edith's own expression. Two or
three lessons of this description produced their due effect; and when he
saw a male Dixon or Gervase approaching him he bit his lip and summoned
up his courage. But when he descried a "ministering angel" he made haste
and hid behind a hedge or took to the woods. In course of time the desire
to escape became an instinct, to be followed as a matter of course; in
the same way he avoided the adders on the mountain. His old ideals were
almost if not quite forgotten; he knew that the female of the _bete
humaine_, like the adder, would in all probability sting, and he
therefore shrank from its trail, but without any feeling of special
resentment. The one had a poisoned tongue as the other had a poisoned
fang, and it was well to leave them both alone. Then had c