rty, and seeming to grow younger-hearted as they grow
older-headed, can cast off care and work at a moment's warning, laugh
and frolic now as they did twenty years ago, and say with Wordsworth--

"So was it when I was a boy,
So let it be when I am old,
Or let me die!"

Unfortunately, as will appear hereafter, Elsley's especial _betes
noirs_ were this very Wynd and his inseparable companion, Naylor, who
happened to be not only the best men of the set, but Mellot's especial
friends. Both were Rugby men, now reading for their degree. Wynd was a
Shropshire squire's son, a lissom fair-haired man, the handiest of
boxers, rowers, riders, shots, fishermen, with a noisy superabundance of
animal spirits, which maddened Elsley. Yet Wynd had sentiment in his
way, though he took good care never to show it Elsley; could repeat
Tennyson from end to end; spouted the Mort d'Arthur up hill and down
dale, and chaunted rapturously, "Come into the garden, Maud!" while he
expressed his opinion of Maud's lover in terms more forcible than
delicate. Naylor, fidus Achates, was a Gloucestershire parson's son, a
huge heavy-looking man, with a thick curling lip, and a sleepy eye; but
he had brains enough to become a first-rate classic; and in that same
sleepy eye and heavy lip lay an infinity of quiet humour; racy old
country stories, quaint scraps of out-of-the-way learning, jovial old
ballads, which he sang with the mellowest of voices, and a slang
vocabulary, which made him the dread of all bargees from Newnham pool to
Upware. Him also Elsley hated, because Naylor looked always as if he was
laughing at him, which indeed he was.

And the worst was, that Elsley had always to face them both at once. If
Wynd vaulted over a gate into his very face, with a "How de' do, Mr.
Vavasour? Had any verses this morning?" in the same tone as if he had
asked, "Had any sport?" Naylor's round face was sure to look over the
stone-wall, pipe in mouth, with a "Don't disturb the gentleman, Tom;
don't you see he's a composing of his rhymes!" in a strong provincial
dialect put on for the nonce. In fact, the two young rogues, having no
respect whatsoever for genius, perhaps because they had each of them a
little genius of their own, made a butt of the poet, as soon as they
found out that he was afraid of them.

But worse _betes noirs_ than either Wynd or Naylor were on their way to
fill up the cup of Elsley's discomfort. And at last, without a note of
warning,