came pure and colourless and full
of understatements, and--just as if he was a real clergyman--neither
men nor boys ever forgot that he was there. He had observed this, and it
pleased him very much. His conscience permitted him to enter the Church
whenever his profession, which was the scholastic, should demand it.

"No gutter in the world's as wet as this," said Agnes, who had peeled
off her brother's sock, and was now toasting it at the embers on a pair
of tongs.

"Surely you know the running water by the edge of the Trumpington road?
It's turned on occasionally to clear away the refuse--a most primitive
idea. When I was up we had a joke about it, and called it the 'Pem.'"

"How complimentary!"

"You foolish girl,--not after me, of course. We called it the 'Pem'
because it is close to Pembroke College. I remember--" He smiled a
little, and twiddled his toes. Then he remembered the bedmaker, and
said, "My sock is now dry. My sock, please."

"Your sock is sopping. No, you don't!" She twitched the tongs away from
him. Mrs. Aberdeen, without speaking, fetched a pair of Rickie's socks
and a pair of Rickie's shoes.

"Thank you; ah, thank you. I am sure Mr. Elliot would allow it."

Then he said in French to his sister, "Has there been the slightest sign
of Frederick?"

"Now, do call him Rickie, and talk English. I found him here. He had
forgotten about us, and was very sorry. Now he's gone to get some
dinner, and I can't think why he isn't back."

Mrs. Aberdeen left them.

"He wants pulling up sharply. There is nothing original in
absent-mindedness. True originality lies elsewhere. Really, the lower
classes have no nous. However can I wear such deformities?" For he had
been madly trying to cram a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe.

"Don't!" said Agnes hastily. "Don't touch the poor fellow's things." The
sight of the smart, stubby patent leather made her almost feel faint.
She had known Rickie for many years, but it seemed so dreadful and so
different now that he was a man. It was her first great contact with the
abnormal, and unknown fibres of her being rose in revolt against it. She
frowned when she heard his uneven tread upon the stairs.

"Agnes--before he arrives--you ought never to have left me and gone
to his rooms alone. A most elementary transgression. Imagine the
unpleasantness if you had found him with friends. If Gerald--"

Rickie by now had got into a fluster. At the kitchens he had lost his
he