ts and linen, in case of accident. His sisters,
one by one, threw their arms around him, and said commonplace things to
him to hide the less common thoughts in their mind.

At length Henry took his seat on the carrier's waggon, after receiving a
luminous impression of London--modern London, not the Edward-John
London--from Mr. Jukes of the "Wings and Spur," and drove away, turning
his face from his friends to avoid a silly inclination to cry. As the
carrier cracked his whip while his horses gathered pace down the street,
his passenger looked back to the old familiar house and signalled to the
group still standing by the door; but for all the high hopes that
beckoned him along this road that ran to London he was sorry to go.

When they were passing the cottage of old Carne, and a sweet face lit by
two violet eyes looked out between the dimity curtains, while a girl's
hand rattled pleasantly on the window, Henry smiled and waved his arm.
But he was dimly conscious he had lost something he could not define. It
had to do with tears on a woman's wrinkled face.

CHAPTER III

THE REAL AND THE IDEAL

IT was a perfect day in "the sweet o' the year" when the carrier's
waggon creaked along the highway to Stratford with Henry Charles perched
beside the red-faced driver.

There is, perhaps, no county in all England so full of charm in
spring-time and the early summer as leafy Ardenshire. The road on which
the hope of Hampton travelled is typical of many in that fair
countryside. Gleaming white in the morning sunshine, it lies snug
between high banks of prodigal growth, bramble and trailing arbutus,
backed by green bushes, among which the massy white clots of
elder-blossom look like snowy souvenirs of the winter that has fled,
with here and there a strong note of colour struck by swaying foxgloves.
The lanes that steal away from the highway are often as beautiful as
those of glorious Devon, and all bear promise that if the wanderer will
but come with them he will surely find the veritable

"Bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlip and the nodding violet grows;
Quite over-canopy'd with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine."

But it was not of the wild beauties by the way that Henry thought as
onward creaked the waggon. Nor was it for long that the picture of his
mother's face and the light of violet