‘A chick with half a feather on,’ I remarked, ’is not always of the same mind as a piece of poultry of full plumage.’

’Hang your sneering and your talk of a fine girl, like my Janet, as a piece of poultry, you young rooster!  You toss your head up like a cock too conceited to crow.  I ’ll swear the girl ’s in love with you.  She does you the honour to be fond of you.  She ’s one in a million.  A handsome girl, straight-backed, honest, just a dash, and not too much, of our blood in her.’

‘Consult her again, sir,’ I broke in.  ’You will discover she is not of your way of thinking.’

‘Do you mean to say she’s given you a left-hander, Harry?’

‘I have only to say that I have not given her the option.’

He groaned going up the steps of his hotel, faced me once or twice, and almost gained my sympathy by observing, ’When we’re boys, the old ones worry us; when we’re old ones, the boys begin to tug!’ He rarely spoke so humanely,—­rarely, at least, to me.

For a wonder, he let the matter drop:  possibly because he found me temperate.  I tried the system on him with good effect during our stay in London; that is, I took upon myself to be always cool, always courteous, deliberate in my replies, and not uncordial, though I was for representing the reserved young man.  I obtained some praise for my style and bearing among his acquaintances.  To one lady passing an encomium on me, he said, ‘Oh, some foreign princess has been training him,’ which seemed to me of good augury.

My friends Temple and Heriot were among the Riversley guests at Christmas.  We rode over to John Thresher’s, of whom we heard that the pretty Mabel Sweetwinter had disappeared, and understood that suspicion had fallen upon one of us gentlemen.  Bob, her brother, had gone the way of the bravest English fellows of his class-to America.  We called on the miller, a soured old man.  Bob’s evasion affected him more than Mabel’s, Martha Thresher said, in derision of our sex.  I was pained to hear from her that Bob supposed me the misleader of his sister; and that he had, as she believed, left England, to avoid the misery of ever meeting me again, because he liked me so much.  She had been seen walking down the lanes with some one resembling me in figure.  Heriot took the miller’s view, counting the loss of one stout young Englishman to his country of far greater importance than the escapades of dozens of girls, for which simple creatures he had no compassion:  he held the expression of it a sham.  He had grown coxcombical.  Without talking of his conquests, he talked largely of the ladies who were possibly in the situation of victims to his grace of person, though he did not do so with any unctuous boasting.  On the contrary, there was a rather taking undertone of regret that his enfeebled over-fat country would give her military son no worthier occupation.  He laughed at the mention of Julia Bulsted’s name.  ’She proves, Richie, marriage is the best of all receipts for women, just as it’s the worst for men.  Poor Billy Bulsted, for instance, a first-rate seaman, and his heart’s only half in his profession since he and Julia swore their oath; and no wonder,—­he made something his own that won’t go under lock and key.  No military or naval man ought ever to marry.’