girl in a smart cap
came to the door.

'Oh,' she said, 'it's you, is it! Come to see the young ladies, are
you?' Paul nodded with his hands in his pockets.

'You're in pretty fettle!' said the girl. 'Look at your boots! Look at
your hair! Look at the smut on your nose!'

Paul looked at his boots, tried to look at his hair, squinted downwards
in search of the smut, and said: 'Bother!'

'All right,' the girl responded. 'You'll find 'em in the garden. They'll
be rare and proud to see you.'

Paul, somewhat shamefaced, took the familiar way into the garden, and
stood rooted. A small striped tent of pink and white had been set up on
the unshaven grass-plot, and five or six girls, all in white dresses,
were seated near it round a tea-table. One, who had black hair and dark
eyes, wore a crimson sash, and the rest had blue sashes with prodigious
bows. Paul knew them all with one exception, but after the first glance
he had eyes for the exception only. She was a lackadaisical young person
of eighteen, with pale sandy ringlets and a cold-boiled-veal complexion;
but he thought her a creature of another sphere, and his heart shivered
with a strange, delicious sense of worship. He stood and stared, and his
inward thoughts were poorly translated by his aspect, as happens with
most people How long the dream held him he did not know, but the Vision
turned, and he met the young person's eye.

'Who is that dirty boy? asked the Vision. 'I suppose he wants to speak
to you, Zillah.'

Zillah, who was the elder of the two orphan girls, turned, and blushed
till she looked the colour of her sash. But she rose from her seat and
came to Paul and whispered to him:

'You mustn't come here to-day, Paul We've got company. And goodness
gracious, child, how untidy you are to be sure!'

Then shame fell like an avalanche, and Paul went altogether dizzy and
silly under the shock of it How he got home he never knew, but an
hour later he was in the back-kitchen, standing on a mat in his
stocking-feet, with his shirt-sleeves turned up to his elbows, and was
polishing his boots until the leather grew hot beneath the brush. He
washed himself in a frenzy of remorse and resolve, and scoured his hands
with yellow soap, silver sand, and a stubbly scrubbing-brush until they
tingled. Then he fell upon the family stock of hair-oil, which was kept
in a medicine-bottle in the kitchen cupboard, and, except on Sundays,
was held sacred to the girls. Then he put