Soft and cool were the sounds the river made, as its gentle tide gurgled a secret music among the high rushes, or rippled round stumps of trees or projections of stone lodged in the bank. Winged insects flashed many-coloured lights upon the eye as they swept from shadow to shadow, parted by a rivulet of sunshine falling through the openings in the trees. Now and again a trout leaped with a pleasant and lazy splash. From the shores opposite, behind the trees, came the smell of the warm red clover, mingled with the multitudinous hum of bees. Afar, at a bend of the stream, an angler might stand watching his quill, with his head and shoulders mirrored in the clear water--so exquisite the counterfeit that one might easily make a parable out of it, and sermonise slumberously, as befitted the drowsy influence of the hot day, on those illusions of life which mock the heart they mislead in its search after truth. Once, when Holdsworth was taking Nelly home, after a long rest on the river’s edge, he met Mr. Conway, who stared very hard, but passed on without addressing the child. Nelly drew close to Holdsworth when she saw the man. Holdsworth knew Conway perfectly well by sight now. The dentist had repeatedly passed the window at which Holdsworth stationed himself on the look-out for Nelly; and of late, it might have been noticed, he would glance with no unfriendly expression towards Mrs. Parrot’s old-fashioned house. His walk, when he did not actually reel, as he very often did, might have been studied with some disgust as an illustration of character. It was a species of gliding movement, such as a man might be supposed to adopt, whose self-abasement he himself holds irrevocable, and who has made up his mind no longer to walk, but to sneak through life. The influence of importunate creditors might be marked in the quick, furtive glancing of the eye, that wandered from side to side and challenged every individual it rested upon. One half-dulled perception of his social obligations might yet linger; or perhaps it was an innate love of dress which, from being a vice in prosperity, would degenerate into a kind of sickly virtue in poverty, that gave him an indescribable air of seedy jauntiness, tilting his soiled hat, swathing his neck in a bright kerchief, and furnishing his body with a small-waisted frock-coat. It was very natural that Mrs. Parrot’s lodger should be somewhat of a mystery to him. Having no liking for children himself, but, on the contrary, a rather decided aversion to them, he could not understand what this Mr. Hampden saw in Nelly to make him so prodigal in his gifts, so eager for her society.