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you only yesterday.” He might have added that Pamela had said she didn’t want to, but politeness kept him silent, that, and a feeling that it was unusually foolish of his admired cousin not to be eager to meet his admirable friend.

“Oh, not here—it was five or six years ago, and she was a very little girl. I shouldn’t have thought she could be long-skirted yet. She wouldn’t remember. It was on a boat. . . . I shouldn’t have remembered either, if she hadn’t been so pretty, and I caught sight of her driving here in London a year or two later, and Waterhouse told me who she was. I don’t know how he knew.”

“Funny! What were you doing? I wonder if you’ll think her changed.”

“Probably. Girls do, don’t they? Come and do something. I feel as if I had been lying down for years. Could we go for a swim?”

They did, and the little girl with the extremely blue eyes went out of his head till the evening. Nothing stayed very long with him at this period. London was spread before him, and he found it good. Theatres, balls, Hurlingham, the River, dinners at smart restaurants, he had never had any of them before, and having sampled them, he was inclined to go on till the end of his tether. He did not find them hollow, or stale, or Dead Sea Fruit, as we are told so many do. On the contrary, he had never expected them to be half so agreeable; he took to them quite naturally, and it filled him with peace to be clothed by a good tailor that he was unable to afford. London made the pleasures of Rome seem pale and thin. He knew that at this rate the savings of years would last a bare six weeks, but he had always meant to get some fun out of those savings, and had never hoped for such a brilliant opportunity, so that did not affect his conduct.

Besides, as he had said, people were being very nice to