ntly taken a measure of the
world outside Under Town, and is all the surer of his feet for having
stood up against greater odds and for having walked the slippery plank
of Navy regulations. "If you'm minded to run up against me," he seems
to be saying, "come and try; here I am." The two photographs suggest
the difference between a bird in winter and in the mating season.
George's uniform, in the later photograph, has become his spring
plumage.

[Sidenote: _GEORGE HOME_]

When he sent word that he was coming home on leave, I was prepared for
a great change in him, but scarcely for the new George. He used to be
so like a cat on a sunny wall; used to lie along the stern seat of the
_Moondaisy_ so lazy and content that only his ever-watchful eyes
held any expression. He was deeply sunburnt: scraggy in the neck;
strong and lissome, but not very smart.

He is returned home no less strong and lissome, and exceedingly smart.
The sunburn is gone; indeed there's many a maiden would envy his
complexion; and his long stout neck, with the broadening bands of
muscle, would delight a sculptor. The alert expression, that used to be
more or less limited to his eyes, has spread, so to speak, over all his
face, over the whole of him and into all his movements. He is
organised; unified. In repose now, he would not be simply lazy; he
would be _being lazy_. His features, rather indeterminate of old, have
become curiously refined, almost delicate, almost supercilious (in the
pride of young strength), but not quite either. It is noticeable
generally that an orderly mental existence has great power to
regularise the features, and in so doing, to refine them. Hence perhaps
this refinement of feature in George; for if, in the effort to gain
promotion, he has been putting his heart into his work--the routine
work of his ship and the Naval barracks--it follows that his mental
existence must have been very orderly and regular. But how far the
total change in him is due to Navy discipline, and how far to his
arrival at mating time, one cannot say, neither probably could he.
Among working people nothing so smartens a young man and so quickly
sets him on his own feet as a little traffic with the maidens;
especially when he can't get his own way too easily. George, I gather,
is paying attention to two or three.

Whereas his toilet used to consist of dragging on trousers, guernsey
and boots, and lacing up the last-named aboard his boat, if at all, i