FRIVOLOUS CUPID.
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I.
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RELUCTANCE.

I.

Neither life nor the lawn-tennis club was so full at Natterley
that the news of Harry Sterling's return had not some importance.

He came back, moreover, to assume a position very different from
his old one. He had left Harrow now, departing in the sweet
aroma of a long score against Eton at Lord's, and was to go up to
Oxford in October. Now between a schoolboy and a University man
there is a gulf, indicated unmistakably by the cigarette which
adorned Harry's mouth as he walked down the street with a
newly acquiescent father, and thoroughly realized by his old
playmates. The young men greeted him as an equal, the boys
grudgingly accepted his superiority, and the girls received him
much as though they had never met him before in their lives and
were pressingly in need of an introduction. These features of
his reappearance amused Mrs. Mortimer; she recollected him as an
untidy, shy, pretty boy; but mind, working on matter, had so
transformed him that she was doubtful enough about him to ask her
husband if that were really Harry Sterling.