or two, from the group and looked with timid curiosity on the
children. She was a London girl, her head still dancing with the
delights of her first season, and she had never been to a
Sunday-school treat in her life. Madge Merewether, her old
schoolfellow, had told her she was to help amuse the little girls.
Heaven knew how she was to do it. Already the unintelligibility of
Lancashire speech had filled her with dismay. The array of
hard-faced little girls daunted her; she turned to the boys, but she
only saw one--the little hatless, coatless scarecrow with the
perfect features And arresting grace, who stood out among his smug
companions with the singularly vivid incongruity of a Greek Hermes
in the central hall of Madame Tussaud's waxwork exhibition.
Fascinated, she strayed down the line toward him. She halted, looked
for a second or two into a pair of liquid black eyes and then
blushed in agonized shyness. She stared at the beautiful boy, and
the beautiful boy stared at her, and not a word could she find in
her head to speak. She turned abruptly and moved away. The boy broke
rank and slowly followed her.

For little Paul Kegworthy the heavens had opened and flooded his
senses, till he nearly fainted, with the perfume of celestial lands.
The intoxicating sweetness of it bewildered his young brain. It was
nothing delicate, evanescent, like the smell of a flower. It as
thick, pungent, cloying, compelling. Mouth agape and nostril wide,
he followed the exquisite source of the emanation like one in a
dream, half across the yard. A curate laughingly and unsuspectingly
brought him back to earth by laying hands on him and bundling him
back into his place. There he remained, being a docile urchin; but
his eyes remained fixed on Maisie Shepherd. She was only a rosebud
beauty of an English girl, her beauty heightened by the colour of