m than in old days, and he
had become, if anything, more shy in his ways with her. He was to
return to Guestwick again during this autumn; but, to tell honestly
the truth in the matter, Lily Dale did not think or care very
much for his coming. Girls of nineteen do not care for lovers of
one-and-twenty, unless it be when the fruit has had the advantage
of some forcing apparatus or southern wall.

John Eames's love was still as hot as ever, having been sustained on
poetry, and kept alive, perhaps, by some close confidence in the ears
of a brother clerk; but it is not to be supposed that during these
two years he had been a melancholy lover. It might, perhaps, have
been better for him had his disposition led him to that line of life.
Such, however, had not been the case. He had already abandoned the
flute on which he had learned to sound three sad notes before he left
Guestwick, and, after the fifth or sixth Sunday, he had relinquished
his solitary walks along the towing-path of the Regent's Park
Canal. To think of one's absent love is very sweet; but it becomes
monotonous after a mile or two of a towing-path, and the mind
will turn away to Aunt Sally, the Cremorne Gardens, and financial
questions. I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her
lover's mind if she knew the whole of it.

"I say, Caudle, I wonder whether a fellow could get into a club?"

This proposition was made, on one of those Sunday walks, by John
Eames to the friend of his bosom, a brother clerk, whose legitimate
name was Cradell, and who was therefore called Caudle by his friends.

"Get into a club? Fisher in our room belongs to a club."

"That's only a chess-club. I mean a regular club."

"One of the swell ones at the West End?" said Cradell, almost lost in
admiration at the ambition of his friend.

"I shouldn't want it to be particularly swell. If a man isn't a
swell, I don't see what he gets by going among those who are. But
it is so uncommon slow at Mother Roper's." Now Mrs Roper was a
respectable lady, who kept a boarding-house in Burton Crescent, and
to whom Mrs Eames had been strongly recommended when she was desirous
of finding a specially safe domicile for her son. For the first year
of his life in London John Eames had lived alone in lodgings; but
that had resulted in discomfort, solitude, and, alas! in some amount
of debt, which had come heavily on the poor widow. Now, for the
second year, some safer mode of life was necessary.