an afternoon"; she "liked her forty winks peaceable."
She, however, further informed him that "he read very nice"; but as she
had said the same thing of Grantly Ffolliot's performance, her nephew
could not feel uplifted by her praise.

The vicar poured a little balm on his wounded spirit by hastening after
him as he walked slowly and gloomily homewards, to thank him with warm
urbanity for his kind help, but he made no remark upon his reading.
They parted at the vicarage gate, and Eloquent pursued his way alone.

He felt restless and curiously disappointed. Everything was exactly as
it had been before, and somehow he had expected it to be different.

So far he had encountered no special desire on the part of the "upper
classes" to cultivate him. He was quite shrewd enough to perceive that
those he had met--the Campions at Marlehouse and the few who had
offered him hospitality in London--had done so purely on political
grounds.

Only one, so far, had shown any kindness to him, the shy, wistfully
self-conscious young man, hungry for sympathy and comprehension. Only
one, Mary Ffolliot, had seemed to recognise in him other possibilities
than those of party: but had she?

Anyway, here was he in the same village with her not a mile away, and
yet a gulf stretched between them apparently impassable as a river in
flood to a boatless man who could not swim.

That evening Miss Gallup decided that her nephew did not possess much
general conversation.

CHAPTER XII

MISS ELSMARIA BUTTERMISH

The twins were not in the least alike, either in disposition or
appearance, but they were inseparable. They were known to their large
circle of friends and still more numerous censors as "Uz" and "Buz,"
but their real names were Lionel and Hilary, a fact they rigidly
suppressed at all times.

Buz was tall for his age, slender and fair, with regular, Grantly
features, and eyes like his mother's. Uz was short and chubby,
tirelessly mischievous, and of an optimistic cheerfulness that neither
misfortune nor misunderstanding could diminish. Buz was the reading
Ffolliot, imaginative, and easily swayed by what he read; and his was
the fertile brain that created and suggested all manner of wrong-doing
to his twin. Just then the mania of both was for impersonation. "To
dress up," and if possible to mislead their fellow-creatures as to
their identity, was their chief aim in life. Here, the "prettiness"
that in his proper person B