ouse. He
selected the only lit window as hers. Behind the blind, Mrs.
Frobisher, thirty-eight, was busy with her curl-papers--she used
papers because they were better for the hair--and discussing certain
neighbours in a fragmentary way with Mr. Frobisher, who was in
bed. Presently she moved the candle to examine a faint discolouration
of her complexion that rendered her uneasy.

Outside, Mr. Lewisham (eighteen) stood watching the orange oblong for
the best part of half an hour, until it vanished and left the house
black and blank. Then he sighed deeply and returned home in a very
glorious mood indeed.

He awoke the next morning feeling extremely serious, but not clearly
remembering the overnight occurrences. His eye fell on his clock. The
time was six and he had not heard the alarum; as a matter of fact the
alarum had not been wound up. He jumped out of bed at once and
alighted upon his best trousers amorphously dropped on the floor
instead of methodically cast over a chair. As he soaped his head he
tried, according to his rules of revision, to remember the overnight
reading. He could not for the life of him. The truth came to him as he
was getting into his shirt. His head, struggling in its recesses,
became motionless, the handless cuffs ceased to dangle for a
minute....

Then his head came through slowly with a surprised expression upon his
face. He remembered. He remembered the thing as a bald discovery, and
without a touch of emotion. With all the achromatic clearness, the
unromantic colourlessness of the early morning....

Yes. He had it now quite distinctly. There had been no overnight
reading. He was in Love.

The proposition jarred with some vague thing in his mind. He stood
staring for a space, and then began looking about absent-mindedly for
his collar-stud. He paused in front of his Schema, regarding it.

CHAPTER IV.

RAISED EYEBROWS.

"Work must be done anyhow," said Mr. Lewisham.

But never had the extraordinary advantages of open-air study presented
themselves so vividly. Before breakfast he took half an hour of
open-air reading along the allotments lane near the Frobishers' house,
after breakfast and before school he went through the avenue with a
book, and returned from school to his lodgings circuitously through
the avenue, and so back to the avenue for thirty minutes or so before
afternoon school. When Mr. Lewisham was not looking over the top of
his book during these periods of op