Polly looked up--half laughing. She understood his reference to herself and her new sweetheart. Hubert would play her game if she would play his. Well--she had no objection whatever to help him to the sight of Laura when she could. Polly's moral sense was not over-delicate, and as to the upshot and issues of things, her imagination moved but slowly. She did not like to let herself think of what might have been Hubert's relations to women--to one or two wild girls about Whinthorpe for instance. But Laura--Laura who was so much their social better, whose manners and self-possession awed them both, what smallest harm could ever come to her from any act or word of Hubert's? For this rustic Westmoreland girl, Laura Fountain stood on a pedestal robed and sceptred like a little queen. Hubert was a fool to fret himself--a fool to go courting some one too high for him. What else was there to say or think about it? At the next street corner Laura made a resolute stop. Polly should not any longer be defrauded of her Mr. Seaton. Besides she, Laura, wished to talk to Hubert. Mr. Beaton's long words, and way of mouthing his highly correct phrases, had already seemed to take the savour out of the morning. When the exchange was made--Mr. Seaton alas! showing less eagerness than might have been expected--Laura quietly examined her companion. It seemed to her that he was taller than ever; surely she was not much higher than his elbow! Hubert, conscious that he was being scrutinised, turned red, looked away, coughed, and apparently could find nothing to say. "Well--how are you getting on?" said the light voice, sending its vibration through all the man's strong frame. "I suppose I'm getting on all right," he said, switching at the railings beside the road with his stick. "What sort of work do you do?" He gave her a stumbling account, from which she gathered that he was for the time being the factotum of an office, sent on everybody's errands, and made responsible for everybody's shortcomings. She threw him a glance of pity. This young Hercules, with his open-air traditions, and his athlete's triumphs behind him, turned into the butt and underling of half a dozen clerks in a stuffy office! "I don't mind," he said hastily. "All the others paid for their places; I didn't pay for mine. I'll be even with them all some day. It was the chance I wanted, and my uncle gives me a lift now and then. It was to please him they gave me the berth; he's worth thousands and thousands a year to them!" And he launched into a boasting account of the importance and abilities of his uncle, Daniel Mason, who was now managing director of the great shipbuilding yard into which Hubert had been taken, as a favour to his kinsman. "He began at the bottom, same as me--only he was younger than me," said Hubert, "so he had the pull. But you'll see, I'll work up. I've learnt a lot since I've been here. The classes at the Institute--well, they're fine!"