're after?--I forget."

Aldous found his packet and his hat, explaining himself again,
meanwhile, in his usual voice. He had dropped in on Hallin for a morning
visit, meaning to spend some hours before the House met in the
investigation of some small workshops in the neighbourhood of Drury
Lane. The Home Office had been called upon for increased inspection and
regulation; there had been a great conflict of evidence, and Aldous had
finally resolved in his student's way to see for himself the state of
things in two or three selected streets.

It was a matter on which Hallin was also well-informed, and felt
strongly. They stayed talking about it a few minutes, Hallin eagerly
directing Raeburn's attention to the two or three points where he
thought the Government could really do good.

Then Raeburn turned to go.

"I shall come and drag you out to-morrow afternoon," he said, as he
opened the door.

"You needn't," said Hallin, with a smile; "in fact, don't; I shall have
my jaunt."

Whereby Aldous understood that he would be engaged in his common
Saturday practice of taking out a batch of elder boys or girls from one
or other of the schools of which he was manager, for a walk or to see
some sight.

"If it's your boys," he said, protesting, "you're not fit for it. Hand
them over to me."

"Nothing of the sort," said Hallin, gaily, and turned him out of the
room.

* * * * *

Raeburn found the walk from Hallin's Bloomsbury quarters to Drury Lane
hot and airless. The planes were already drooping and yellowing in the
squares, the streets were at their closest and dirtiest, and the traffic
of Holborn and its approaches had never seemed to him more bewildering
in its roar and volume. July was in, and all freshness had already
disappeared from the too short London summer.

For Raeburn on this particular afternoon there was a curious forlornness
in the dry and tainted air. His slack mood found no bracing in the sun
or the breeze. Everything was or seemed distasteful to a mind out of
tune--whether this work he was upon, which only yesterday had interested
him considerably, or his Parliamentary occupations, or some tiresome
estate business which would have to be looked into when he got home. He
was oppressed, too, by the last news of his grandfather. The certainty
that this dear and honoured life, with which his own had been so closely
intertwined since his boyhood, was drawing to its close we