rought them round again to the top of the Heath. Mr. Hood
looked at his watch, and found that it was time to be moving homewards.
Tea was punctually at five. Mrs. Hood would take it ill if they were
late, especially on Saturday.

As they walked across the smooth part of the upper common, looking at
the houses around, they saw coming towards them a gentleman followed by
three dogs. He was dressed in a light tweed suit, and brandished a
walking-stick, as if animal spirits possessed him strongly.

'Why, here comes Mr. Dagworthy,' remarked Mr. Hood, in a low tone,
though the other was still at a considerable distance. 'He generally
goes off somewhere on Saturday afternoon. What a man he is for dogs! I
believe he keeps twenty or thirty at the house there.'

Emily evinced just a little self-consciousness. It was possible that Mr.
Dagworthy would stop to speak, for she had become, in a measure,
acquainted with him in the preceding spring. She was at home then for a
few weeks before her departure for London, and the Baxendales, who had
always shown her much kindness, invited her to an evening party, at
which Dagworthy was present. He had chatted with her on that occasion.

Yes, he was going to speak. He was a man of five-and-thirty, robust,
rather florid, with eyes which it was not disagreeable to meet, though
they gazed with embarrassing persistency, and a mouth which he would
have done well to leave under the natural shelter of a moustache; it was
at once hard and sensual. The clean-shaving of his face gave his
appearance a youthfulness to which his tone of speech did not
correspond.

'How do you do, Miss Hood? Come once more into our part of the world,
then? You have been in London, I hear.'

It was the tone of a man long accustomed to have his own way in life,
and not overmuch troubled with delicacies of feeling. His address could
not be called disrespectful, but the smile which accompanied it
expressed a sort of good-natured patronage, perhaps inevitable in such a
man when speaking to his clerk's daughter. The presence of the clerk
himself very little concerned him. He kept his eyes steadily on the
girl's face, examining her with complete frankness. His utterance was
that of an educated man, but it had something of the Yorkshire accent, a
broadness which would have distressed the ear in a drawing-room.

Emily replied that she had been in London; it did not seem necessary to
enter into details.

'Pleasant afternoon