Next day, however, was a half-holiday, and he did not reach the school till the afternoon, when all the children were dispersed and the house shut up. Mrs. Brown, he was informed at the nearest cottage, where it appeared her little maid-servant lived, had gone away for the afternoon, so that his inquiries made no further progress that day. He went to tell his adventure to Lady William, and, if not to suggest this solution, at least to ask what she knew of Mrs. Brown. But Lady William also was out of doors, and nothing more was to be done. He hesitated whether he should not go to the Rectory to make a call of thanks, and to see (perhaps) if Emmy Plowden resembled her aunt as much by daylight as she had done in the unusually favourable circumstances of last night. But this intention he did not carry out. Unfortunately for romance, Leo was so ungrateful as to recall what he called the _bourgeois_ dinner, the drab-coloured comfort, the petty little anxieties and cares (chiefly on his own account) of the Rectory party, with more amusement than admiration, though with a compunction, too. Kind excellent people! How abominable it was to laugh at them! But his laughter was not checked by the compunction--it only gave a certain piquancy to all that was ludicrous in the picture. The third person whose mind was full of Mrs. Brown was Jim Plowden. He had seen her little of late, partly that the many calls Mr. Osborne made upon him left him less time for those strolls about the village, which had ended so often in the ‘Blue Boar,’ but sometimes, to his advantage, in the schoolhouse; partly because, now that the evenings were so much lighter, he could not go there unseen. This reason had acted with the others in the partial reformation of Jim. It was scarcely possible to go into the ‘Blue Boar’ in the lingering daylight while all the village folk were about. Had he been altogether uninterrupted in his former habits, it is possible that by this time he might not have cared. But Mr. Osborne’s warm and exacting friendship had begun with the lengthening days, and after an interval, even of a week or two, such a hindrance told. On this occasion, however, Jim felt that he must risk a little danger for the sake of a woman who had been kind to him, who had certainly amused him, and, he sometimes began to think, had done him good. It could be nothing to her advantage to have a visitor such as he was. She had done it, he thought vaguely, out of kindness, and now he would risk something for kindness too; and then he could always say he had brought a message about the school from his father, or Florence, who took an interest in the school, or Mab, or somebody. Fortified by his good intention he walked into the schoolmistress’s house about six o’clock that evening when all the people were about, several of whom stared, he could see, at Mrs. Brown’s visitor--in which, however, I need not say, Jim deceived himself, for the village people were already aware