d as a game of hockey."

"I have n't the enthusiasm."

The eyebrows of the stained-glass man twitched; he twisted his moustache.

"You 'll find not having a hobby does n't pay," he said; "you 'll get
old, then where 'll you be?"

It came as a surprise that he should use the words "it does n't pay," for
he had a kind of partially enamelled look, like that modern jewellery
which really seems unconscious of its market value.

"You've given up the Bar? Don't you get awfully bored having nothing to
do?" pursued the stained-glass man, stopping before an ancient sundial.

Shelton felt a delicacy, as a man naturally would, in explaining that
being in love was in itself enough to do. To do nothing is unworthy of a
man! But he had never felt as yet the want of any occupation. His
silence in no way disconcerted his acquaintance.

"That's a nice old article of virtue," he said, pointing with his chin;
and, walking round the sundial, he made its acquaintance from the other
side. Its grey profile cast a thin and shortening shadow on the turf;
tongues of moss were licking at its sides; the daisies clustered thick
around its base; it had acquired a look of growing from the soil. "I
should like to get hold of that," the stained-glass man remarked; "I
don't know when I 've seen a better specimen," and he walked round it
once again.

His eyebrows were still ironically arched, but below them his eyes were
almost calculating, and below them, again, his mouth had opened just a
little. A person with a keener eye would have said his face looked
greedy, and even Shelton was surprised, as though he had read in the
Spectator a confession of commercialism.

"You could n't uproot a thing like that," he said; "it would lose all its
charm."

His companion turned impatiently, and his countenance looked wonderfully
genuine.

"Couldn't I?" he said. "By Jove! I thought so. 1690! The best
period." He ran his forger round the sundial's edge. "Splendid
line-clean as the day they made it. You don't seem to care much about
that sort of thing"; and once again, as though accustomed to the
indifference of Vandals, his face regained its mask.

They strolled on towards the kitchen gardens, Shelton still busy
searching every patch of shade. He wanted to say "Can't stop," and
hurry off; but there was about the stained-glass man a something
that, while stinging Shelton's feelings, made the showing of them
quite impossible. "Feelings!" t