ly one person particularly observed
him or was stimulated to any mental activity by his procedure. Even at
that, this person was affected only because she was Herbert's relative,
of an age sympathetic to his and of a sex antipathetic.

In spite of the fact that Herbert, thus seriously disporting himself on
his father's back fence, attracted only an audience of one (and she
hostile at a rather distant window) his behaviour might well have been
thought piquant by anybody. After climbing to the top of the fence he
would produce from interior pockets a small memorandum-book and a
pencil. His expression was gravely alert, his manner more than
businesslike; yet nobody could have failed to comprehend that he was
enjoying himself, especially when his attitude became tenser, as it
frequently did. Then he would rise, balancing himself at adroit ease,
his feet one before the other on the inner rail, below the top of the
boards, and with eyes dramatically shielded beneath a scoutish palm, he
would gaze sternly in the direction of some object or movement that had
attracted his attention and then, having satisfied himself of something
or other, he would sit and decisively enter a note in his
memorandum-book.

He was not always alone; sometimes he was joined by a friend, male, and,
though shorter than Herbert, about as old; and this companion was
inspired, it seemed, by motives precisely similar to those from which
sprang Herbert's own actions. Like Herbert he would sit upon the top of
the high fence; like Herbert he would rise at intervals, for the better
study of something this side the horizon; then, also like Herbert, he
would sit again and write firmly in a little notebook. And seldom in the
history of the world have any such sessions been invested by the
participants with so intentional an appearance of importance.

That was what most irritated their lone observer at the somewhat distant
upstairs back window. The important importance of Herbert and his friend
was so extreme as to be all too plainly visible across four intervening
broad back yards; in fact, there was sometimes reason to suspect that
the two performers were aware of their audience and even of her goaded
condition; and that they deliberately increased the outrageousness of
their importance on her account. And upon the Saturday of that week,
when the notebook writers were upon the fence the greater part of the
afternoon, Florence's fascinated indignation became vo