cab lurched round the corner as he spoke, and the two patients
came in sight. Agnes was leaning over the creosoted garden-gate, and
behind her there stood a young man who had the figure of a Greek athlete
and the face of an English one. He was fair and cleanshaven, and his
colourless hair was cut rather short. The sun was in his eyes, and they,
like his mouth, seemed scarcely more than slits in his healthy skin.
Just where he began to be beautiful the clothes started. Round his neck
went an up-and-down collar and a mauve-and-gold tie, and the rest of his
limbs were hidden by a grey lounge suit, carefully creased in the right
places.

"Lovely! Lovely!" cried Agnes, banging on the gate, "Your train must
have been to the minute."

"Hullo!" said the athlete, and vomited with the greeting a cloud of
tobacco-smoke. It must have been imprisoned in his mouth some time, for
no pipe was visible.

"Hullo!" returned Rickie, laughing violently. They shook hands.

"Where are you going, Rickie?" asked Agnes. "You aren't grubby. Why
don't you stop? Gerald, get the large wicker-chair. Herbert has letters,
but we can sit here till lunch. It's like spring."

The garden of Shelthorpe was nearly all in front an unusual and pleasant
arrangement. The front gate and the servants' entrance were both at the
side, and in the remaining space the gardener had contrived a little
lawn where one could sit concealed from the road by a fence, from the
neighbour by a fence, from the house by a tree, and from the path by a
bush.

"This is the lovers' bower," observed Agnes, sitting down on the bench.
Rickie stood by her till the chair arrived.

"Are you smoking before lunch?" asked Mr. Dawes.

"No, thank you. I hardly ever smoke."

"No vices. Aren't you at Cambridge now?"

"Yes."

"What's your college?"

Rickie told him.

"Do you know Carruthers?"

"Rather!"

"I mean A. P. Carruthers, who got his socker blue."

"Rather! He's secretary to the college musical society."

"A. P. Carruthers?"

"Yes."

Mr. Dawes seemed offended. He tapped on his teeth, and remarked that the
weather bad no business to be so warm in winter. "But it was fiendish
before Christmas," said Agnes.

He frowned, and asked, "Do you know a man called Gerrish?"

"No."

"Ah."

"Do you know James?"

"Never heard of him."

"He's my year too. He got a blue for hockey his second term."

"I know nothing about the 'Varsity."

Rickie winced at the abbreviation