personally conducted him to the Zoo and stood him dinner afterwards
at Kettner's, and whenever the two of them happened to be in town
on the anniversary of that bygone festivity they religiously
repeated the programme in its entirety. Even the menu of the
dinner was adhered to as nearly as possible; the original selection
of food and wine that schoolboy exuberance, tempered by schoolboy
shyness, had pitched on those many years ago, confronted Youghal on
those occasions, as a drowning man's past life is said to rise up
and parade itself in his last moments of consciousness.

The flirtation which was thus perennially restored to its old-time
footing owed its longevity more to the enterprising solicitude of
Miss McQuade than to any conscious sentimental effort on the part
of Youghal himself. Molly McQuade was known to her neighbours in a
minor hunting shire as a hard-riding conventionally unconventional
type of young woman, who came naturally into the classification, "a
good sort." She was just sufficiently good-looking, sufficiently
reticent about her own illnesses, when she had any, and
sufficiently appreciative of her neighbours' gardens, children and
hunters to be generally popular. Most men liked her, and the
percentage of women who disliked her was not inconveniently high.
One of these days, it was assumed, she would marry a brewer or a
Master of Otter Hounds, and, after a brief interval, be known to
the world as the mother of a boy or two at Malvern or some similar
seat of learning. The romantic side of her nature was altogether
unguessed by the countryside.

Her romances were mostly in serial form and suffered perhaps in
fervour from their disconnected course what they gained in length
of days. Her affectionate interest in the several young men who