Morell comes back with Eugene, whom Burgess contemplates moist-eyed with enthusiasm. He is a strange, shy youth of eighteen, slight, effeminate, with a delicate childish voice, and a hunted, tormented expression and shrinking manner that show the painful sensitiveness that very swift and acute apprehensiveness produces in youth, before the character has grown to its full strength. Yet everything that his timidity and frailty suggests is contradicted by his face. He is miserably irresolute, does not know where to stand or what to do with his hands and feet, is afraid of Burgess, and would run away into solitude if he dared; but the very intensity with which he feels a perfectly commonplace position shows great nervous force, and his nostrils and mouth show a fiercely petulant wilfulness, as to the quality of which his great imaginative eyes and fine brow are reassuring. He is so entirely uncommon as to be almost unearthly; and to prosaic people there is something noxious in this unearthliness, just as to poetic people there is something angelic in it. His dress is anarchic. He wears an old blue serge jacket, unbuttoned over a woollen lawn tennis shirt, with a silk handkerchief for a cravat, trousers matching the jacket, and brown canvas shoes. In these garments he has apparently lain in the heather and waded through the waters; but there is no evidence of his having ever brushed them. As he catches sight of a stranger on entering, he stops, and edges along the wall on the opposite side of the room. MORELL (as he enters). Come along: you can spare us quarter of an hour, at all events. This is my father-in-law, Mr. Burgess--Mr. Marchbanks. MARCHBANKS (nervously backing against the bookcase). Glad to meet you, sir. BURGESS (crossing to him with great heartiness, whilst Morell joins Candida at the fire). Glad to meet YOU, I'm shore, Mr. Morchbanks. (Forcing him to shake hands.) 'Ow do you find yoreself this weather? 'Ope you ain't lettin' James put no foolish ideas into your 'ed? MARCHBANKS. Foolish ideas! Oh, you mean Socialism. No. BURGESS. That's right. (Again looking at his watch.) Well, I must go now: there's no 'elp for it. Yo're not comin' my way, are you, Mr. Morchbanks? MARCHBANKS. Which way is that? BURGESS. Victawriar Pork station. There's a city train at 12.25. MORELL. Nonsense. Eugene will stay to lunch with us, I expect. MARCHBANKS (anxiously excusing himself). No--I--I-- BURGESS. Well, well, I shan't press you: I bet you'd rather lunch with Candy. Some night, I 'ope, you'll come and dine with me at my club, the Freeman Founders in Nortn Folgit. Come, say you will. MARCHBANKS. Thank you, Mr. Burgess. Where is Norton Folgate--down in Surrey, isn't it? (Burgess, inexpressibly tickled, begins to splutter with laughter.) CANDIDA (coming to the rescue). You'll lose your train, papa, if you don't go at once. Come back in the afternoon and tell Mr. Marchbanks where to find the club.