ind
now after the other men left the bar, and avoided interviews with
Patty alone as diligently as he had sought them before. She was
puzzled at his change of manner, and not being able to account
for it, was piqued, and ready to revenge herself, and pay him out
in the hundred little ways which the least practiced of her sex
know how to employ for the discipline of any of the inferior or
trousered half of the creation. If she had been really in love
with him, it would have been a different matter; but she was not.
In the last six weeks she had certainly often had visions of the
pleasures of being a lady and keeping servants, and riding in a
carriage like the squires' and rectors' wives and daughters about
her home. She had a liking, even a sentiment for him, which might
very well have grown into something dangerous before long; but as
yet it was not more than skin deep. Of late, indeed, she had been
much more frightened than attracted by the conduct of her
admirer, and really felt it a relief, notwithstanding her pique,
when he retired into the elder brother sort of state. But she
would have been more than woman if she had not resented the
change; and so very soon the pangs of jealousy were added to his
other troubles. Other men were beginning to frequent "The
Choughs" regularly. Drysdale, besides dividing with Tom the
prestige of being an original discoverer, was by far the largest
customer. St. Cloud came, and brought Chanter with him, to whom
Patty was actually civil, not because she liked him at all, but
because she saw that it made Tom furious. Though he could not fix
on any one man in particular, he felt that mankind in general
were gaining on him. In his better moments, indeed, he often
wished that she would take the matter into her own hands and
throw him over for good and all; but keep away from the place
altogether he could not, and often when he fancied himself on the
point of doing it, a pretty toss of her head, or a kind look of
her eyes would scatter all his good resolutions to the four
winds.

And so the days dragged on, and he dragged on through them; hot
fits of conceit alternating in him with cold fits of despondency
and mawkishness and discontent with everything and everybody,
which were all the more intolerable from their entire
strangeness. Instead of seeing the bright side of all things, he
seemed to be looking at creation through yellow spectacles, and
saw faults and blemishes in all his acqua