OLIVER got into a habit of standing in his shop-door, leaning against one or other of the door-posts. He stood there to keep his weaknesses well in hand, as a declaration of war against all promulgators of recognised theories of gentility, and as a proclamation of fraternity and equality to his brother-shopkeepers. If he had known it, he was rather a striking figure at the station he had chosen. He was a Saul among the people. His shoulders were only rounded by his own shrugs. His complexion was fresh and slightly weather-beaten, neither tanned into leather nor baked into paste, nor faded into a girlish delicacy. His hands, when he took them out of his pockets, were the unbroadened, unflattened, well-kept hands of a man who for a period of years has handled books chiefly, and only plied an oar or a foil, and carried a rod or a gun, by way of that variety which has saved his fingers from becoming either slender or plump. His feet showed the effect of contact with the wares of a higher order of bootmaker than any known in Friarton. The clothes Oliver had bought and paid for from an Oxford tailor were not worn out, and though he meant to replace them by the work of a Friarton tailor in all its integrity, it was not to be supposed that even then he would be able to prevent an imitative townsman doing his best to copy the University ‘cut;’ so that Oliver, in spite of himself, would still wear suits which were a faint reflection of the coats of the disciples of Poole. Oliver was standing in this guise at his shop-door the next time he saw the Stanhopes; and Harry called out again in the same tone of cheerful curiosity, ‘I say, Constable, what are you about there?’ After his former experience, Oliver was pleased to find that now he did not change colour—by the ghost of a shade. He simply moved a quarter of an inch to enable himself to glance up at the sign above his head, and call the Stanhopes’ attention to it—especially to the glittering spot where the Christian name ‘Peter’ had been erased and replaced by ‘Oliver.’ ‘Was reading not included in your education?’ he enquired, lazily. It was Harry who grew red, gaped and stopped short, while Horace looked sharply from the sign to Harry to get his cue from his prompter. ‘Come, now,’ stammered Harry, taken aback as he was, and speaking out impulsively according to his wont, ‘this is too much to make us cram. You don’t mean to say you’re a——’ ‘A baker as well as a miller,’ suggested Oliver, with a laugh; ‘just so. I wish I could say I was keeping shop—I am hardly good for so much—but I’m looking after the premises and my business in a general way.’