a small boy; for poverty, and the fact that
he was the eldest son of a large family, had given him the habit of
thinking of spring and summer, autumn and winter, as so many stages in a
prolonged campaign. Although he was still under thirty, this forecasting
habit had marked two semicircular lines above his eyebrows, which
threatened, at this moment, to crease into their wonted shapes. But
instead of settling down to think, he rose, took a small piece of
cardboard marked in large letters with the word OUT, and hung it
upon the handle of his door. This done, he sharpened a pencil, lit a
reading-lamp and opened his book. But still he hesitated to take his
seat. He scratched the rook, he walked to the window; he parted the
curtains, and looked down upon the city which lay, hazily luminous,
beneath him. He looked across the vapors in the direction of Chelsea;
looked fixedly for a moment, and then returned to his chair. But the
whole thickness of some learned counsel's treatise upon Torts did not
screen him satisfactorily. Through the pages he saw a drawing-room,
very empty and spacious; he heard low voices, he saw women's figures, he
could even smell the scent of the cedar log which flamed in the grate.
His mind relaxed its tension, and seemed to be giving out now what
it had taken in unconsciously at the time. He could remember Mr.
Fortescue's exact words, and the rolling emphasis with which he
delivered them, and he began to repeat what Mr. Fortescue had said, in
Mr. Fortescue's own manner, about Manchester. His mind then began to
wander about the house, and he wondered whether there were other rooms
like the drawing-room, and he thought, inconsequently, how beautiful the
bathroom must be, and how leisurely it was--the life of these well-kept
people, who were, no doubt, still sitting in the same room, only they
had changed their clothes, and little Mr. Anning was there, and the aunt
who would mind if the glass of her father's picture was broken. Miss
Hilbery had changed her dress ("although she's wearing such a pretty
one," he heard her mother say), and she was talking to Mr. Anning,
who was well over forty, and bald into the bargain, about books. How
peaceful and spacious it was; and the peace possessed him so completely
that his muscles slackened, his book drooped from his hand, and he
forgot that the hour of work was wasting minute by minute.

He was roused by a creak upon the stair. With a guilty start he composed
hims