“I am grateful to your noble ladyship.  May your ladyship’s goodness sew up the hole which is in the pocket where I carry my character, and which has caused me to lose it so frequent.  It’s a bad place for men to keep their characters in; but such is the fashion.  And so hurray for the glorious nineteenth century!”

He took off his coat, seized the roller, and began to pull it with an energy foreign to the measured millhorse manner of the accustomed laborer.  Miss Wilson looked doubtfully at him, but, being in haste, went indoors without further comment.  The girls mistrusting his eccentricity, kept aloof.  Agatha determined to have another and better look at him.  Racket in hand, she walked slowly across the grass and came close to him just as he, unaware of her approach, uttered a groan of exhaustion and sat down to rest.

“Tired already, Mr. Smilash?” she said mockingly.

He looked up deliberately, took off one of his washleather gloves, fanned himself with it, displaying a white and fine hand, and at last replied, in the tone and with the accent of a gentleman: 

“Very.”

Agatha recoiled.  He fanned himself without the least concern.

“You—­you are not a laborer,” she said at last.

“Obviously not.”

“I thought not.”

He nodded.

“Suppose I tell on you,” she said, growing bolder as she recollected that she was not alone with him.

“If you do I shall get out of it just as I got out of the half-crowns, and Miss Wilson will begin to think that you are mad.”

“Then I really did not give you the seven and sixpence,” she said, relieved.

“What is your own opinion?” he answered, taking three pennies from his pocket, jingling them in his palm.  “What is your name?”

“I shall not tell you,” said Agatha with dignity.

He shrugged his shoulders.  “Perhaps you are right,” he said.  “I would not tell you mine if you asked me.”

“I have not the slightest intention of asking you.”

“No?  Then Smilash shall do for you, and Agatha will do for me.”

“You had better take care.”

“Of what?”

“Of what you say, and—­are you not afraid of being found out?”

“I am found out already—­by you, and I am none the worse.”

“Suppose the police find you out!”

“Not they.  Besides, I am not hiding from the police.  I have a right to wear corduroy if I prefer it to broadcloth.  Consider the advantages of it!  It has procured me admission to Alton College, and the pleasure of your acquaintance.  Will you excuse me if I go on with my rolling, just to keep up appearances?  I can talk as I roll.”

“You may, if you are fond of soliloquizing,” she said, turning away as he rose.

“Seriously, Agatha, you must not tell the others about me.”

“Do not call me Agatha,” she said impetuously.  “What shall I call you, then?”