ss.

With a view to providing herself with a male escort Mrs. Chemping had
invited her youngest nephew to accompany her on the first day of the
shopping expedition, throwing in the additional allurement of a
cinematograph theatre and the prospect of light refreshment. As Cyprian
was not yet eighteen she hoped he might not have reached that stage in
masculine development when parcel-carrying is looked on as a thing
abhorrent.

"Meet me just outside the floral department," she wrote to him, "and
don't be a moment later than eleven."

Cyprian was a boy who carried with him through early life the wondering
look of a dreamer, the eyes of one who sees things that are not visible
to ordinary mortals, and invests the commonplace things of this world
with qualities unsuspected by plainer folk--the eyes of a poet or a house
agent. He was quietly dressed--that sartorial quietude which frequently
accompanies early adolescence, and is usually attributed by novel-writers
to the influence of a widowed mother. His hair was brushed back in a
smoothness as of ribbon seaweed and seamed with a narrow furrow that
scarcely aimed at being a parting. His aunt particularly noted this item
of his toilet when they met at the appointed rendezvous, because he was
standing waiting for her bareheaded.

"Where is your hat?" she asked.

"I didn't bring one with me," he replied.

Adela Chemping was slightly scandalised.

"You are not going to be what they call a Nut, are you?" she inquired
with some anxiety, partly with the idea that a Nut would be an
extravagance which her sister's small household would scarcely be
justified in incurring, partly, perhaps, with the instinctive
apprehension that a Nut, even in its embryo stage, would refuse to carry
parcels.

Cyprian looked at her with his wondering, dreamy eyes.

"I didn't bring a hat," he said, "because it is such a nuisance when one
is shopping; I mean it is so awkward if one meets anyone one knows and
has to take one's hat off when one's hands are full of parcels. If one
hasn't got a hat on one can't take it off."

Mrs. Chemping sighed with great relief; her worst fear had been laid at
rest.

"It is more orthodox to wear a hat," she observed, and then turned her
attention briskly to the business in hand.

"We will go first to the table-linen counter," she said, leading the way
in that direction; "I should like to look at some napkins."

The wondering look deepened in Cyprian's e