the children's governess, and seeing her slighted, his blood boiled,
and he was her attendant for the afternoon.

Elspeth was not at this pleasant jink in high life. She had been
invited, but her ladyship had once let Tommy kiss her hand for the
first and last time, so he decided sternly that this was no place for
Elspeth. When temptation was nigh, he first locked Elspeth up, and
then walked into it.

With two in every three women he was still as shy as ever, but the
third he escorted triumphantly to the conservatory. She did no harm to
his work--rather sent him back to it refreshed. It was as if he were
shooting the sentiment which other young men get rid of more gradually
by beginning earlier, and there were such accumulations of it that I
don't know whether he ever made up on them. Punishment sought him in
the night, when he dreamed constantly that he was married--to whom
scarcely mattered; he saw himself coming out of a church a married
man, and the fright woke him up. But with the daylight came again his
talent for dodging thoughts that were lying in wait, and he yielded as
recklessly as before to every sentimental impulse. As illustration,
take his humourous passage with Mrs. Jerry. Geraldine Something was
her name, but her friends called her Mrs. Jerry.

She was a wealthy widow, buxom, not a day over thirty when she was
merry, which might be at inappropriate moments, as immediately after
she had expressed a desire to lead the higher life. "But I have a
theory, my dear," she said solemnly to Elspeth, "that no woman is able
to do it who cannot see her own nose without the help of a mirror."
She had taken a great fancy to Elspeth, and made many engagements with
her, and kept some of them, and the understanding was that she