The Market-Place

ew minutes of embarrassment at this discovery, it filled him with surprised delight to note how perfectly he was at his ease. He co

rtment the previous evening. They seemed now to be as simple and fresh and natural as the unadorned frocks they wore. They listened with an

confession at the outset of his great hunger, and of the sinister apprehensions which had assailed him in his loitering wa

here, then it's farewell to regularity. We put breakfast back till ten, then, as a kind of compromise between our own early habits and his lack of any sort of habits. Why we do it I couldn't

ome unearthly hour, and has his tea and a sandwich from the still-room, and goe

Miss Madden interposed-"is Balder a family name, o

he Viking explanation is the right one-it certainly isn't in eithe

hey say. I always thought it was the best of all the soldier names-and you have o

's connected by tradition with the Army, and he's mad about everything military-and surely he's as clever as anybody else at everything except that wretched matter of books, and even there it's only a defect of memory-and yet that suffices to prevent his serving his Queen. And all over England there are young gentlemen like that

eir names afterward-but it seems that's not what the Army wants nowadays. What is desired now is superior cle

?" asked the American lady. "It always seemed

m. If anything could have kept the House of Lords firm, in the face of the wretched Radical outcry, it would have been those speeches. He pointed out all the evils that would fo

ster, for example, on account of his learning? Not in the very slightest! On the contrary, they regard him with the greatest contempt. The man they will serve is the man whose birth gives him the right to command them, or else the man with money i

od families have so little money, and all the fortunes are in the hands of stockjobbing people-and so on? It w

welfare as those who inherit names, and individually I'm sure they are often much more deserving. Every generation sniffs at its nouveaux riches, but by the next they have become merged in the aristocracy. It isn't a new thing in E

h birthday, but her voice had in it the docile self-repression of a school-girl. She spoke with diffident slowness, her gaze fastened u

ed at him over her spectacles, with the air of having been wearied with a conversation in which he bore no part-"

only know one or two sections of the country-and th

come up for my examinations yet

mildly, "is about the flowers in the tropics-in Java, for example, or

es here this morning, an old acquaintance of mine, the gardener, Gafferson. The last time I saw him, h

a magician; he can do what he likes with plants. It's rathe

g them in interested entertainment by his discourse-these ladies of supremely refined associations and position-seemed to provide an inspiration of its own. He could hear that his voice was automatically modulating itself to their critical ears. His language was producing itself with as much delicacy of selection as if it ca

ch nicer upon acquaintance than he had thought. Her slight figure might not be beautiful, but beyond doubt its lines were ladylike. The same extenuating word applied itself in his mind to her thin and swarthy, though distinguished, features. They bore the stamp of caste, and so did the way sh

ed Honourable. She was the daughter of one Viscount and the sister of another. Her grandfather had been an Earl, and the book had shown her to possess a bewildering number

entertaining his guests," she remarked to him, ove

ave him put himself out in the slightest." Upon consideration he

ing, that is-and he doesn't often come unless they are to go

. "It's a good many years," he went on, "since I had the time and opportunity to do much at it. I think the last shooting I did was alligators. You hit

the birds off every season. Balder's by way of being a crack-shot, you know. The

yet the mental vision of him-self in those old Mexican clothes revealed itself now as ridiculously impossible. He must have been out of hi

ect to start," he began, uneasily. "

ring cord-breeches and leather leggings as he descended the stairs-advanced toward him and prefaced his message by the i

" Miss Winnie bade him, and with a gestur

roblem of his clothes, yet how obvious it had been to her. These old families did something more than fill their houses with servants; they mastered the art of making these servan

. "I haven't brought anything for shooting at all. Somehow I got the idea we were going to do rough riding instead-and so I fetched along some old Mexican riding-clothes that make me feel more at home in the saddle than an

uncommon, but it had big pockets, and it looked like business. Thorpe, as he glanced up and down his image in the tall mirror of the wardr

and Thorpe, who had been tentatively fingering the big, flaring sombr

d then dawdled about the room and the adjoining conservatory for what seemed to him more than half an hour. This phase of the aristocratic routine, he felt, did not commend itself so warmly to

ordship will be down very shortly now, sir," he declared-"and will yo

ighted. The windows and another door opened, he saw, upon a court connected with the stable-yard. By this entrance, no doubt, had come the keeper, a small, brown-faced, brown-clothed man of mature years, with the strap of a po

e had a bright-eyed, intent glance, and his tone conveyed a sense of

orpe, shrugged his shoulders

erless, sir?" the ke

uery. "Oh, anything'll do for me," he said, awkwardly smiling. "It's years

ying it gave Thorpe the notion that "B" must be the weapon that was reserved for school-boys. He watched the operation of putting the gun together, and then took it, and laid it ov

embarrassed by the unpunctuality of others. He was fully attired, hob-nailed shoes, leggings, leather coat and cap, gloves, scarf round his throat and all-and he beha

y, "We are very late today, Barnes." They went out, and began striding down the avenue of trees at such a pace that the k

ds, but the party was close at their heels, and Plowden walked so fast that conversation of any sort, save an occasional remark about the birds and the covers between him and the keeper, was impracticable. The Hon. Balder suddenly turned up in the landscape, leaning against a gate set in a hedgero

d take without cavil the arbitrary orders of this elderly peasant. He bade Lord Plowden proceed to a certain point in one direction, and that nobleman, followed by his valet with the gun and the stool, set meekly off without a word. Bal

s behest, he strove to soothe his ruffled feelings by the argument that it was probably the absolutely correct deportment for a shooting party, his mind remained unconvi

e skyline of the distant Lord Plowden, comfortably seated on the stool which his valet had been carrying. It seemed to Thorpe at that mome

ded pride with him, however, to relieve the keeper of no atom of the responsibility he had taken upon himself. If Lord Plowden's guest had no sport, the blame for it should rest upon Lord Plowden's over-arrogant keeper. Then a noise of a different character assailed his ears, punctuated as it were by distant boyish cries of "mark!" These cries, and the buzzing sound as of clockwork gone wrong which they accompanied an

ction in himself, there kindled a new liking of a different sort for Plowden and Balder. He owed to them, at this belated hour of his life, a novel delight of indescribable charm. There came to him, from

owly over, gun over arm, with as indifferent an air as he could simulate. It pleased him tremendously that no one had thought it worth while to approach the rendezvous by way of the sp

the sight of stained feathers had co-operated to brighten and cheer hi

e boys run over," he said slowly. "There are nine birds within sight,

said

-and Thorpe permitted himself the luxury

eve that it had affected the ladies of the house as well. He could not say that they were more gracious to him, but certainly they appeared to take him more for granted. In a hundred little ways, he seemed to perceive that he was no longer hel

one again with the ladies at breakfast, and during the long day he was much

were some things which came uppermost again and again-but of them all he dwelt most fixedly upon the recollection of moving about in the greenhouses and conservatories, with that tall, stately, fair

's daughter!" he said t