, and were
strolling up St. James's Street, and stopping to chaff the
itinerant coffee vendor, who was preparing his stand at the
corner of Piccadilly for his early customers, just about the time
that Tom was beginning to rouse himself under the alder-tree, and
stretch his stiffened limbs, and sniff the morning air. By the
time the guardsman had let himself into his lodgings in Mount
Street, our hero had undergone his unlooked for bath, and was
sitting in a state of utter bewilderment as to what was next to
be said or done, dripping and disconcerted, opposite to the
equally dripping and, to all appearance, equally disconcerted,
poacher.

At first he did not look higher than his antagonist's boots and
gaiters, and spent a few seconds by the way in considering
whether the arrangement of nails on the bottom of Harry's boots
was better than his own. He settled that it must be better for
wading on slippery stones, and that he would adopt it, and then
passed on to wonder whether Harry's boots were as full of water
as his own, and whether corduroys, wet through, must not be very
uncomfortable so early in the morning, and congratulated himself
on being in flannels.

And so he hung back for second after second, playing with an
absurd little thought that would come into his head and give him
ever so brief a respite from the effort of facing the situation,
and hoping that Harry might do or say something to open the ball.
This did not happen. He felt that the longer he waited the harder
it would be. He must begin himself. So he raised his head gently,
and took a sidelong look at Harry's face, to see whether he could
not get some hint for starting, from it. But scarcely had he
brought his eyes to bear, when they met Harry's, peering
dolefully up from under his eyebrows, on which the water was
standing unwiped, while a piece of green weed, which he did not
seem to have presence of mind enough to remove, trailed over his
dripping locks. There was something in the sight which tickled
Tom's sense of humor. He had been prepared for sullen black looks
and fierce words, instead of which he was irresistibly reminded
of schoolboys caught by their master using a crib, or in other
like flagrant delict.

Harry lowered his eyes at once, but lifted them the next moment
with a look of surprise, as he heard Tom burst into a hearty fit
of laughter. After a short struggle to keep serious, he joined in
it himself.

"By Jove, though, Harry, it