uick foot, with all the
engaging absurdity of their kind; tripping over their own enormous
feet, chewing outlying portions of one another, as ill-brought-up
babies chew their blankets; sitting down abruptly and unpremeditatedly,
and watching with deep dubiety the departing form of their escort, as
though a sudden and shattering doubt of his identity had paralysed
them, until some contrary wind of doctrine blew them into action again,
and they hurled themselves upon his trail, filled with the single
intention to rush between his legs. Nothing but that instinct of
self-preservation that operates independent of the reason, preserved
Larry from frequent and violent overthrow. His head was in the clouds;
he was abandoning himself to dreams, with the very same headlong
enthusiasm that Scandal and Steersman brought to bear upon the problems
of existence. He strode past the glade that had been the scene of the
Cluhir picnic without so much as a thought of Tishy Mangan. Had you or
I reminded him of that brief, yet moving, episode, he would probably
have regarded us with wide, bewildered, blue eyes, and asked for
details. Then, as memory awakened, he would have laughed delightedly,
and said: "Yes! By Jove! So I was! But Georgy cut me out, didn't he?"
And he might have added that there had been scores of them since Tishy,
he had forgotten half of them--but this, THIS! Larry would then,
inevitably, have lapsed into rhapsody, as would be no more than was
decent and right in a young man of artistic temperament, and you or I,
our malign intention baffled, would have retired in deserved confusion.

Old Evans was in the hall as Larry walked in through the open door. He
received Larry's hand-shake coldly; the four years that had passed
since Larry had seen him had withered and greyed him; Larry, something
dashed by the reception, remembered the title given him long ago by
Christian--"the many-wintered crow,"--and found satisfaction in
deciding that the crow was a scald-crow, and a sour old divil at that;
anyhow, Evans had always had a knife into him, so it made no
difference.

In the drawing-room things went well enough, even though there was an
unexplainable chill in the atmosphere. Cousin Isabel was as kind and
gentle and vague as ever; Judith was there, very handsome and
prosperous, not overenthusiastic in welcome, rather inclined to
patronise a very young man, quite two months younger than a married
lady of position and importance.