saw a lean pale boy, with black eyes that burnt in hollows, and sad and
sunken cheeks.

"You ought to try and eat more, Lucian," said the parson; "and why don't
you have some beer?"

He was looking feebly at the roast mutton and sipping a little water; but
he would not have eaten or drunk with more relish if the choicest meat
and drink had been before him.

His bones seemed, as Miss Deacon said, to be growing through his skin; he
had all the appearance of an ascetic whose body has been reduced to
misery by long and grievous penance. People who chanced to see him could
not help saying to one another: "How ill and wretched that Lucian Taylor
looks!" They were of course quite unaware of the joy and luxury in which
his real life was spent, and some of them began to pity him, and to speak
to him kindly.

It was too late for that. The friendly words had as much lost their
meaning as the words of contempt. Edward Dixon hailed him cheerfully in
the street one day:

"Come in to my den, won't you, old fellow?" he said. "You won't see the
pater. I've managed to bag a bottle of his old port. I know you smoke
like a furnace, and I've got some ripping cigars. You will come, won't
you! I can tell you the pater's booze is first rate."

He gently declined and went on. Kindness and unkindness, pity and
contempt had become for him mere phrases; he could not have distinguished
one from the other. Hebrew and Chinese, Hungarian and Pushtu would be