red, "I should be
ashamed."

And when we went home he rode on into Mycening, to see about his
equipment, he said, setting Eustace despairing, lest he, after all,
meant to avoid the London tailor, and to patronise Mycening; but the
equipment turned out to be a great smock-frock. And something very
different came home with him--namely, a little dainty flower-pot and
pan, with an Etruscan pattern, the very best things that had been
turned out of the pottery, adorned with a design in black and white,
representing a charming little Greek nymph watering her flowers.

"Don't you think, Lucy, Miss Tracy being a shareholder, and it being
her birthday, the chairman might present this?" he inquired.

I agreed heartily, but Eustace, with a twist of his cat's-whisker
moustache, opined that they were scarcely elegant enough for Miss
Tracy; and on the Monday, when he did drag Harold up to the tailor's,
he brought down a fragile little bouquet of porcelain violets, very
Parisian, and in the latest fashion, which he flattered himself was the
newest thing extant, and a much more appropriate offering. The violets
could be made by a pinch below to squirt out perfume!

"Never mind, Harold," I said, "you can give your flower-pot all the
same."

"You may," said Harold.

"Why should not you?"

He shook his head. "I've no business," he said; "Eustace is chairman."

I said no more, and I hardly saw Harold the two following days, for he
was gone in the twilight of the January morning and worked as long as
light would allow, and fortunately the moon was in a favourable
quarter; and Phil, to whom the lighter part of the task was allotted,
confided to his companion that he had been wishing to get father to see
things in this light for a long time, but he was that slow to move; and
since Harold had been looking about, Mr. Bullock had advised him not to
give in, for it would be sure to end in the raising of his rent, and
young gentlemen had new-fangled notions that only led to expense and
nonsense, and it was safest in the long run to trust to the agent.

However, the sight of genuine, unflinching toil, with nothing of the
amateur about it, had an eloquence of its own. Farmer Ogden looked on
grimly and ironically for the first two hours, having only been
surprised into consent in the belief that any man, let alone a
gentleman, must find out the impracticability of the undertaking, and
be absolutely sickened. Then he brought out some br