r, however, without that strange thrill of
enthusiastic admiration; that dumb, inarticulate sense of having seen
something entirely satisfying and delightful; satisfying for the moment
only: he paid dearly for his brief joy in after hours of curious
depression and an aching sense of emptiness and loss. She was so far
away.

Sometimes she was driving with her husband, and little Eloquent
wondered after they had passed what manner of man it could be who had
the right to sit by her whenever he liked. He never had time to notice
Mr Ffolliot, till one day he saw him in the carriage alone, and
scrutinised him sternly. Long afterwards he read how some admirer of
Lord Hartington had said that what he liked most about him was his
"You-be-damnedness." The phrase, Eloquent felt, exactly described Mr
Ffolliot; aloof, detached, a fastidious, fine gentleman to his finger
tips, entirely careless as to what the common people thought of him;
not willingly conscious, unless rudely reminded of their existence,
that there were any common people: such, Eloquent felt sure, was Mr
Ffolliot's mental attitude, and he hated him.

Mr Ffolliot wore a monocle, and just at that time a new figure loomed
large on the little boy's political horizon--a figure held up before
him not for admiration, but reprobation--as a turncoat, an apostate, a
real and menacing danger to the Cause dada had most at heart; the
well-known effigy of Mr Joseph Chamberlain. He always appeared with
monocle and orchid. In his expression, judged by the illustrated
papers, there was something of that same "you-be-damnedness" he
disliked so much in Mr Ffolliot. Eloquent lumped them together in his
mind, and hated Mr Ffolliot as ardently as he worshipped his wife; and
to no one at all did he ever say a word about either of them.

He rose rapidly in the school, and when he was nine years old had
reached a form with boys much older than himself, boys old enough to
write essays; and Eloquent wrote essays too; essays which were cruder
and quainter than those of his companions. One day the subject
given--rather an abstruse theme for boys to tackle--was Beauty.
Eloquent wrote as follows:

"Beauty is tall and has a pleasant sounding voice, and you want to come
as near as you can. You want to look at her all the time because you
don't see it often. Beauty is most pretty to look at and you don't
seem to see anyone else when it's there. She smells nice, a wafty
smell like tob