But he had his hopes of the
old chap yet. He would cure him by a course of judicious chaffing. He
was watching the progress of the treatment. Next week--next month--next
year! When the old skipper had put off the date of that return till next
year, he would be well on his way to not saying any more about it. In
other matters he was quite rational, so this, too, was bound to come.
Such was the barber's firm opinion.

Nobody had ever contradicted him; his own hair had gone grey since
that time, and Captain Hagberd's beard had turned quite white, and had
acquired a majestic flow over the No. 1 canvas suit, which he had made
for himself secretly with tarred twine, and had assumed suddenly, coming
out in it one fine morning, whereas the evening before he had been seen
going home in his mourning of broadcloth. It caused a sensation in the
High Street--shopkeepers coming to their doors, people in the houses
snatching up their hats to run out--a stir at which he seemed strangely
surprised at first, and then scared; but his only answer to the
wondering questions was that startled and evasive, "For the present."

That sensation had been forgotten, long ago; and Captain Hagberd
himself, if not forgotten, had come to be disregarded--the penalty of
dailiness--as the sun itself is disregarded unless it makes its power
felt heavily. Captain Hagberd's movements showed no infirmity: he walked
stiffly in his suit of canvas, a quaint and remarkable figure; only his
eyes wandered more furtively perhaps than of yore. His manner abroad had
lost its excitable watchfulness; it had become puzzled and diffident,
as though he had suspected that there was somewhere about him something
slightly compromising, some embarrassing oddity; and yet had remained
unable to discover what on earth this something wrong could be.

He was unwilling now to talk with the townsfolk. He had earned for
himself the reputation of an awful skinflint, of a miser in the matter
of living. He mumbled regretfully in the shops, bought inferior scraps
of meat after long hesitations; and discouraged all allusions to his
costume. It was as the barber had foretold. For all one could tell, he
had recovered already from the disease of hope; and only Miss Bessie
Carvil knew that he said nothing about his son's return because with him
it was no longer "next week," "next month," or even "next year." It was
"to-morrow."

In their intimacy of back yard and front garden he talked with