he dell.
Rickie looked straight at it. Then he said abruptly--

"I think I want to talk."

"I think you do," replied Ansell.

"Shouldn't I be rather a fool if I went through Cambridge without
talking? It's said never to come so easy again. All the people are dead
too. I can't see why I shouldn't tell you most things about my birth and
parentage and education."

"Talk away. If you bore us, we have books."

With this invitation Rickie began to relate his history. The reader who
has no book will be obliged to listen to it.

Some people spend their lives in a suburb, and not for any urgent
reason. This had been the fate of Rickie. He had opened his eyes
to filmy heavens, and taken his first walk on asphalt. He had seen
civilization as a row of semi-detached villas, and society as a state in
which men do not know the men who live next door. He had himself become
part of the grey monotony that surrounds all cities. There was no
necessity for this--it was only rather convenient to his father.

Mr. Elliot was a barrister. In appearance he resembled his son, being
weakly and lame, with hollow little cheeks, a broad white band of
forehead, and stiff impoverished hair. His voice, which he did not
transmit, was very suave, with a fine command of cynical intonation.
By altering it ever so little he could make people wince, especially if
they were simple or poor. Nor did he transmit his eyes. Their peculiar
flatness, as if the soul looked through dirty window-panes, the
unkindness of them, the cowardice, the fear in them, were to trouble the
world no longer.

He married a girl whose voice was beautiful. There was no caress in
it yet all who heard it were soothed, as though the world held some
unexpected blessing. She called to her dogs one night over invisible
waters, and he, a tourist up on the bridge, thought "that is
extraordinarily adequate." In time he discovered that her figure, face,
and thoughts were adequate also, and as she was not impossible socially,
he married her. "I have taken a plunge," he told his family. The family,
hostile at first, had not a word to say when the woman was introduced
to them; and his sister declared that the plunge had been taken from the
opposite bank.

Things only went right for a little time. Though beautiful without and
within, Mrs. Elliot had not the gift of making her home beautiful; and
one day, when she bought a carpet for the dining-room that clashed, he
laughed gently, said he