He'd better not let me catch
him at it.

Eloquent came to the conclusion that it is very difficult to pay court
to a girl who belongs to what his father was wont to call "the
classes." He wondered how they managed it. Such girls, it seemed to
him, were never left alone for a minute. One's only chance was to see
them at parties in a crowd, and if you did dine at their houses, there
was always bridge directly after dinner, when conversation was
restricted to "I double hearts," or "with you," or "No." He studied
the rules of bridge industriously, for he found on inquiry that even
Cabinet Ministers did not disdain it as a recreation. Therefore Dalton
shared with blue-books the little table by his bed.

It's a far cry from Westminster to Woolwich, and in spite of
indefatigable spade-work on his part, it was well on in the third week
in May before he so much as caught a glimpse of Mary Ffolliot.

Then one morning he saw her in Bond Street with her grandmother. She
was on the opposite side of the street rather ahead of him, but he knew
that easy strolling walk, the flat back, and proud carriage of the
head: that head with its burnished hair coiled smoothly under a
bewitching hat. They stopped to look in at Asprey's window, and he
dashed across the road in the full stream of traffic. Two indignant
taxi-drivers swore, and he reached the curb breathless, but uninjured,
just as they went into the shop.

He stood staring at the window, keeping at the same time a sharp
look-out on the door.

What an age they were!

He had just decided that the only thing to do was to go in and buy
something, when they came out.

Mary saw him at once, and his round face looked so wistful that she
greeted him with quite unnecessary warmth. She recalled him to Mrs
Grantly, who, remembering vaguely that he was a young man who had
"risen from the ranks," was also more cordial than the occasion
demanded.

He walked up Bond Street with them, piloted them across Piccadilly, and
turned with them down Haymarket, so plainly delighted to see them, so
nervous, so pathetically anxious to please, that Mrs Grantly's
hospitable instincts, fatally easy to rouse where pity played a part,
overcame her discretion. Her husband and her daughter used to declare
that she had a perfect genius for encumbering herself with impossible
people--and repenting afterwards. With dismay she realised that
Eloquent had, apparently, attached himself to them. S