ture, in its green weedy spring, is composed of. Young
Richard had quitted his cousin Austin fully resolved to do his penance
and drink the bitter cup; and he had drunk it; drained many cups to the
dregs; and it was to no purpose. Still they floated before him, brimmed,
trebly bitter. Away from Austin's influence, he was almost the same boy
who had slipped the guinea into Tom Bakewell's hand, and the lucifers
into Farmer Blaize's rick. For good seed is long ripening; a good boy is
not made in a minute. Enough that the seed was in him. He chafed on
his road to Raynham at the scene he had just endured, and the figure of
Belthorpe's fat tenant burnt like hot copper on the tablet of his brain,
insufferably condescending, and, what was worse, in the right. Richard,
obscured as his mind's eye was by wounded pride, saw that clearly, and
hated his enemy for it the more.

Heavy Benson's tongue was knelling dinner as Richard arrived at the
Abbey. He hurried up to his room to dress. Accident, or design, had laid
the book of Sir Austin's aphorisms open on the dressing-table. Hastily
combing his hair, Richard glanced down and read--

"The Dog returneth to his vomit: the Liar must eat his Lie."

Underneath was interjected in pencil: "The Devil's mouthful!"

Young Richard ran downstairs feeling that his father had struck him in
the face.

Sir Austin marked the scarlet stain on his son's cheekbones. He sought
the youth's eye, but Richard would not look, and sat conning his plate,
an abject copy of Adrian's succulent air at that employment. How
could he pretend to the relish of an epicure when he was painfully
endeavouring to masticate The Devil's mouthful?

Heavy Benson sat upon the wretched dinner. Hippias usually the silent
member, as if awakened by the unnatural stillness, became sprightly,
like the goatsucker owl at night and spoke much of his book, his
digestion, and his dreams, and was spared both by Algernon and Adrian.
One inconsequent dream he related, about fancying himself quite young
and rich, and finding himself suddenly in a field cropping razors
around him, when, just as he had, by steps dainty as those of a French
dancing-master, reached the middle, he to his dismay beheld a path clear
of the blood, thirsty steel-crop, which he might have taken at first had
he looked narrowly; and there he was.

Hippias's brethren regarded him with eyes that plainly said they wished
he had remained there. Sir Austin, however,