the phrase over in their mind, put it away, took it down, pecked at it;
tossed it afar, and ran after it forthwith, wishful to forget it, but
unable to let it go.

It might mean much, it might mean nothing. With some young men it would
not have been an excuse for a second thought, but Henry was not like
other young men. He was their Henry--or rather, he had been; for Mrs.
Charles now watched him with something of that chagrin which must arise
in the maternal bosom of the hen that has mothered a brood of ducklings
when she sees them going where she cannot follow. As for Dora, she
doubted if she had ever known this new Henry who spoke easily of "Flo--a
jolly, dashing sort of girl."

The phrase, careless and colloquial though it was, had all the potency
of the biograph to project before the mind's eye of Mrs. Charles and of
Dora pictures of a young woman who stepped out, smirked, disappeared,
and came again in a new dress to do many things they disliked.

But it was not the same young woman that both of them saw, and neither
of them mentioned her thoughts to the other. The figure which flashed
frequently on to the screen of his mother's thoughts was that of a bold,
designing creature--dangerously attractive--whose purpose was to entrap
her Henry. Dora recognised her dressed for another part, in which she
displayed a tendency to giggle and cast flattering eyes on a gullible
young man.

Edward John saw nothing of this figure in the fairy drama of his mind,
where Henry always moved close to the footlights and left the other
characters in the unillumined region of the stage.

Henry had renewed his acquaintance with the Rev. Godfrey Needham, whom
he found still swimming, though with weakening stroke, in his sea of
scrappy scholarship, rising manfully some times on a fine billow of
Latin, but spluttering a moment later when he breasted a frothy wave of
French.

"Ah, my dear Henry, toil on, plod on, and remember always that _Hoffnung
ist der Wanderstab von der Wiege bis zum grabe_, which, as you have no
German, means that hope is the pilgrim's staff from the cradle to the
grave. We are all pilgrims--always pilgrims--you in the sunshine, I in
the frost of life."

This was his benediction; and somehow the innocent vanity of the vicar's
borrowed philosophy no longer amused, but fingered tender cords in the
soul of the young man.

Eunice, although she had met him several times after that walk from the
church, had never said