watched him for a while in silence. Presently he said:--

"Have you ever tried drinking beer?"

I admitted I had not.

"Oh, it is beastly stuff," he rejoined with an involuntary shudder.

Rendered forgetful of present trouble by bitter recollection of the past,
he puffed away at his pipe carelessly and without judgment.

"Do you often drink it?" I inquired.

"Yes," he replied gloomily; "all we fellows in the fifth form drink beer
and smoke pipes."

A deeper tinge of green spread itself over his face.

He rose suddenly and made towards the hedge. Before he reached it,
however, he stopped and addressed me, but without turning round.

"If you follow me, young 'un, or look, I'll punch your head," he said
swiftly, and disappeared with a gurgle.

He left at the end of the terms and I did not see him again until we were
both young men. Then one day I ran against him in Oxford Street, and he
asked me to come and spend a few days with his people in Surrey.

I found him wan-looking and depressed, and every now and then he sighed.
During a walk across the common he cheered up considerably, but the
moment we got back to the house door he seemed to recollect himself, and
began to sigh again. He ate no dinner whatever, merely sipping a glass
of wine and crumbling a piece of bread. I was troubled at noticing this,
but his relatives--a maiden aunt, who kept house, two elder sisters, and
a weak-eyed female cousin who had left her husband behind her in
India--were evidently charmed. They glanced at each other, and nodded
and smiled. Once in a fit of abstraction he swallowed a bit of crust,
and immediately they all looked pained and surprised.

In the drawing-room, under cover of a sentimental song, sung by the
female cousin, I questioned his aunt on the subject.

"What's the matter with him?" I said. "Is he ill?"

The old lady chuckled.

"You'll be like that one day," she whispered gleefully.

"When," I asked, not unnaturally alarmed.

"When you're in love," she answered.

"Is _he_ in love?" I inquired after a pause.

"Can't you see he is?" she replied somewhat scornfully.

I was a young man, and interested in the question.

"Won't he ever eat any dinner till he's got over it?" I asked.

She looked round sharply at me, but apparently decided that I was only
foolish.

"You wait till your time comes," she answered, shaking her curls at me.
"You won't care much about your dinner--not if you are _really_ in