ing about sympathy. It
afterwards became the Souls, but those in the know still call them the
Tommies.

They blackballed Mrs. Jerry (she was rather plump), but her married
stepdaughter, Lady Pippinworth (who had been a Miss Ridge-Fulton), was
one of them. Indeed, the Ridge-Fultons are among the thinnest families
in the country.

T. Sandys was invited to join the society, but declined, and thus
never quite knew what they did, nor can any outsider know, there being
a regulation among the Tommies against telling. I believe, however,
that they were a brotherhood, with sisters. You had to pass an
examination in unrequited love, showing how you had suffered, and
after that either the men or the women (I forget which) dressed in
white to the throat, and then each got some other's old love's hand to
hold, and you all sat on the floor and thought hard. There may have
been even more in it than this, for one got to know Tommies at sight
by a sort of careworn halo round the brow, and it is said that the
House of Commons was several times nearly counted out because so many
of its middle-aged members were holding the floor in another place.

Of course there were also the Anti-Tommies, who called themselves
(rather vulgarly) the Tummies. Many of them were that shape. They held
that, though you had loved in vain, it was no such mighty matter to
boast of; but they were poor in argument, and their only really strong
card was that Mr. Sandys was stoutish himself.

Their organs in the press said that he was a man of true genius, and
slightly inclined to _embonpoint_.

This maddened him, but on the whole his return was a triumph, and
despite thoughts of Grizel he was very, very happy, for he was at play
again. He was a boy, and all the ladies were girls. Perhaps the lady
he saw most frequently was Mrs. Jerry's stepdaughter. Lady Pippinworth
was a friend of Lady Rintoul, and had several times visited her at the
Spittal, but that was not the sole reason why Tommy so frequently
drank tea with her. They had met first at a country house, where, one
night after the ladies had retired to rest, Lady Pippinworth came
stealing into the smoking-room with the tidings that there were
burglars in the house. As she approached her room she had heard
whispers, and then, her door being ajar, she had peeped upon the
miscreants. She had also seen a pile of her jewellery on the table,
and a pistol keeping guard on top of it. There were several men in the