He was almost as slow as Cecilia herself in "taking to" strangers. There were two or three other young fellows at the stationer's, beside one rather older man named Andrews, and Mr. Thompson himself, Felix' employer. Felix was respectful to Mr. Thompson, submissive to Andrews, and on the alert to do his work well: but personally, he cared for none of them, perhaps because he would not care, would not take the trouble to know any of them sufficiently well for indifference to pass into liking. After Cecilia's style, he held aloof, and thereby made himself disliked. A man who would have friends must "show himself friendly." "I shall not live this sort of life always. I am made for something better," he would say to himself, when he found that his own repellent bearing was inducing the same from others. He forgot that whether or no some other mode of life might be "better," according to his views, yet so long as he did live "this sort of life," he owed courtesy and kindness to those about him. Or perhaps it was not so much that he forgot, as that he did not know. Cecilia's training, moral and religious, of this dearly loved young brother had been defective. "I am made for something better," Felix declared again, late that Saturday afternoon, as he left the Parade and strode through the dark streets towards his now lonely home. "Something will turn up, sooner or later. I will get on! I'll let them know that I'm up to work, and then, when an opening comes—" "How do you do?" a voice said, and Felix found himself, under the lamplight, face to face with Mr. Kelly. The clergyman looked younger, more frail, and more at his ease, than when visiting Cecilia Anderson. Felix paused less reluctantly than he would have paused a week earlier. In his present loneliness, a friendly word was not to be counted worthless. "How do you do, Anderson? Quite well? So you have not yet heard of your sisters' safe arrival?" "No." Felix wondered how he knew. "I called at your door just now, in passing, to ask. And Mrs. Crofton says that a letter is awaiting you. She hopes it may contain news of them." "From Lettice?" "A strange handwriting, Mrs. Crofton said—though that was hardly her business or mine." Mr. Kelly turned, and walked beside Felix. "You will be impatient to have your letter." "I ought to have news of them by this time. They went on Thursday." "True, that snowy day." "Dr. Rotherbotham told me I had no business to let them start. But—I don't know how I was to help it. Cecilia always has her own way. I suppose it's all right. Ill news would be sure to travel fast. Only I did think Lettice would drop me a line." "I should like to hear about them before long. Will you come in to supper with me to-morrow evening, after Church?" "I don't go to Church in the evening," Felix answered bluntly.