etically among themselves.

By degrees Tom developed other symptoms of the distemper which had come
upon him so suddenly. He had always been remarkable for a certain
towsiness of appearance and carelessness of dress which harmonized with
his Bohemian habits. All this he suddenly abjured. One fine morning he
paid successive visits to his tailor, his boot-maker, his hatter, and
his hosier, which left all those worthy tradesmen rubbing their hands
with satisfaction. About a week afterwards he emerged from his rooms in
a state of gorgeousness which impressed his landlady and amazed his
friends. His old college companions hardly recognized Tom's honest phiz
as it looked out above the most fashionable of coats and under the
glossiest of hats.

His father was anything but edified by the change.

"I don't know what's coming over the lad, Kate," he remarked after one
of his visits. "If I thought he was going to turn to a fop, by the Lord
Harry I'd disown him! Don't you notice a change in him yourself?"

Kate managed to evade the question, but her bright blush might have
opened the old man's eyes had he observed it. He hardly realized yet
that his son really was a man, and still less did he think of John
Harston's little girl as a woman. It is generally some comparative
stranger who first makes that discovery and brings it home to friends
and relatives.

Love has an awkward way of intruding itself at inconvenient times, but
it never came more inopportunely than when it smote one who was reading
for his first professional examination. During these weeks, when Tom
was stumping about in boots which were two sizes too small for him, in
the hope of making his muscular, well-formed foot a trifle more elegant,
and was splitting gloves in a way which surprised his glover, all his
energies ought by rights to have been concentrated upon the mysteries of
botany, chemistry, and zoology. During the precious hours that should
have been devoted to the mastering of the sub-divisions of the
celenterata or the natural orders of endogenous plants, he was expending
his energies in endeavouring to recall the words of the song which his
cousin had sung the evening before, or to recollect the exact intonation
with which she remarked to him that it had been a fine day, or some
other equally momentous observation. It follows that, as the day of the
examination came round, the student, in his lucid intervals, began to
feel anxious for the