om the ruck of his fellows, but joining hands with them again
in the careful touch to his hair, the neat collar, the pretty necktie.

Now, the moment a young man begins to look to his neckties, unless he is
a mere dude, there is a reason for it. Henry Charles was impossible
miles from dudeism; _ergo_, there was a reason for his lingering at the
looking-glass.

He had been slower than the average young man to awaken to the fact that
for most male beings still unmated, there is some young lady deeply
interested in his neckties and the cut of his coat. But he had awakened,
and now the difficulty was to know which young lady: there seemed to be
so many in Laysford who took an interest in the clever young assistant
editor of the _Leader_. To be on the safe side, it was well to be
observant of the sartorial conventions, even while in the inner recesses
of the literary mind disdaining them.

That is Henry's state of mind when we see him after tea at the mirror in
the camceiled bedroom. If it surprises you, remember that it is four
years since you met him last, and many things can happen in that time.
How do we know what has happened to him? His necktie tells us something,
doesn't it?

CHAPTER X

VIOLET EYES

WHEN Henry was seated alongside the carrier that fateful morning long
ago--Henry, you must be more than twenty-two!--he had to pass the
cottage of old Carne the sexton, and a sweet face, jewelled with a pair
of violet eyes, looked out between the curtains, a girl's hand rattled
on the window-pane. The owner of these eyes had been playing with a
caterpillar when Henry went round the village telling everybody he met
that he was going away to Stratford--her among the rest. But surely that
was ages ago! "I could never have been such a young ass," Henry would
say to a certainty if you were to ask him at the mirror.

Well, here is Eunice Lyndon in proof of the fact that it was almost six
years since. At all events, she says she is just nineteen, and she was
thirteen then. She doesn't play with caterpillars now; but her eyes are
certainly violet, though Henry probably thought they were blue, if he
thought of them at all.

The six years have wrought wonders in the girl who rattled on the
window when Henry went forth to the fray.

For one thing, Eunice, who was the chum of Dora, and thus a frequent
visitor in the Charles household, had discredited the cr