rousers, and (what Tom, of course, examined carefully)
French boots, very neat, and very thin. Moreover, he had lavender
kid-gloves on. Tom looked and wondered, and walked half round him,
sniffing like a dog when he examines into the character of a fellow
dog.

"Hum!--his mark seems to be at present P.P.--prosperous party: so
there can be no harm in renewing our acquaintance. What trade on
earth does he live by, though? Editor of a newspaper? or keeper of a
gambling-table? Begging his pardon, he looks a good deal more like the
latter than the former. However--"

And he walked up and offered his hand, with "How d'e do, Briggs? Who
would have thought of our falling from the skies against each other in
this fashion?"

Mr. Briggs hesitated a moment, and then took coldly the offered hand.

"Excuse me; but the circumstances of my visit here are too painful to
allow me to wish for society."

And Mr. Briggs withdrew, evidently glad to escape.

"Has he vampoosed with the contents of a till, that he wishes so for
solitude?" asked Tom; and, shouldering his carpet-bag a second time,
with a grim inward laugh, he went to his father's house, and hung up
his hat in the hall, just as if he had come in from a walk, and walked
into the study; and not finding the old man, stepped through the
garden to Mark Armsworth's, and in at the drawing-room window,
frightening out of her wits a short, pale, ugly girl of seventeen,
whom he discovered to be his old playfellow, Mary. However, she soon
recovered her equanimity: he certainly never lost his.

"How d'e do, darling? How you are grown! and how well you look! How's
your father? I hadn't anything particular to do, so I thought I'd come
home and see you all, and get some fishing."

And Mary, who had longed to throw her arms round his neck, as of old,
and was restrained by the thought that she was grown a great girl now,
called in her father, and all the household; and after a while the old
Doctor came home, and the fatted calf was killed, and all made merry
over the return of this altogether unrepentant prodigal son, who,
whether from affectation, or from that blunted sensibility which often
comes by continual change and wandering, took all their affection and
delight with the most provoking coolness.

Nevertheless, though his feelings were not "demonstrative," as fine
ladies say now-a-days, he evidently had some left in some corner of
his heart; for after the fatted calf was eaten, an