Jack Dadd was enchanted when Harry not only enrolled himself a member of the cricket club, but presided over its entertainments in the ‘Admiral Keppel’ afterwards. Here was an adherent worth having, an authority as ready as he was great, from his unimpeachable advantages, on sport and horseflesh. It was rather in pure enthusiastic homage to his gifts and attainments, than in lurking sycophancy, that, though Harry was fain to render himself hail-fellow-well-met to his new associates, Jack began by deferring to him unfeignedly, and headed the other members in cheerfully acknowledging Harry’s born supremacy. The would be man of the people accepted the unsolicited tribute as a matter of course, and not at all as if he disliked it. On the contrary, he showed a very fair capacity for playing the cock of the roost in addition to his other performances. And only Oliver Constable groaned over these indications of what would be the sort of alliance formed between Harry Stanhope and his adopted class; how the members of widely severed sets in society brought together through self-interest and for self-indulgence, would play into each other’s weaknesses, and simply work out their mutual lapse and loss. Strict disciplinarian as Mrs. Polley was, she did not object to her girls giggling at Harry Stanhope’s exuberant chaff, and exultingly accepting bets of gloves and ribands with him, in which the Miss Polleys were always the winners. Mrs. Polley did not exactly understand that Harry Stanhope, who at his present stage was incapable of being anything else than boyishly friendly and merry with all women, had chaffed in precisely the same manner the barmaids of his earlier acquaintance. Mrs. Polley herself smiled broadly on Harry’s jokes, and called him ‘a good sort,’ a perfect gentleman, none of your stuck-up pretenders—unquestionably Harry was not a _stuck-up_ pretender.