Perhaps it had been found that the neighborhood was become hardened to the sight of the luxuriant pictured hair; perhaps some who had provided themselves with the small copy of it, to be obtained inside on a bottle full of brown stuff, had grown inclined to treat of it lightly: "Ah, Madame Finibald!" perhaps one irritated customer had said to the old proprietress, coming to have made clear to her why after three bottles of Gold Elixir her locks were still not thick, still not glossy and splendid as the announcement promised they should be, "it's easy to cork up herb tea. It's easy to make hair long in a picture, and it's easy to make it thick. I don't believe there ever was any such person as that young woman on the label!" One morning saw a change in Madame Finibald's window. All the accustomed things were crowded to the sides to make room for a chair; on this sat a girl with brown-gold hair that reached in very truth to the floor. On every morning and every afternoon, through a long winter, first one end and then the other of the little street was crossed by a youth who kept to the larger thoroughfares with the stream. He carried books; he went rapidly, granting small attention to the things he passed. It is not from that to be supposed that he was profoundly thinking. His face, agreeable in feature and color, was rather wanting in expression; no more interesting than it was interested. He passed at precisely the same hour every morning, and the time of his passing in the afternoon varied but little. This, from October unto April. But when April set its gold stamp on the weather, had there been any wise person observing this well--constructed blond machine, applauding its regularity, holding it up perhaps as an example to other young frequenters of schools and lecture-rooms--that wise person would have been troubled, he would have had misgivings, he would have been at last full of grief. A change had come over the young man's mood. His eye was acquiring a roving habit. If his step had before been bent on duty, it was now less directly bent; if before he had been on time at his appointments, he must now have been always more or less late. He walked leisurely, swinging his books by a strap. He loitered before shop-windows, he turned to look after a face. The sky smiled down between the rows of buildings on the occasion of the first balmy day; little clouds floated in it, shimmering like dissolving pearls. He returned the soft sky's compliment; he looked up at it, the winter sternness melting from his eyes. At every street corner he was seen to stop, foolishly smiling upward; and, yes, positively, he was seen there, forgetful of all the people, to sigh and stretch! On that very day he lost three books out of his strap, and did not for some time notice it; when he did, he cared nothing! From a scrawl on the fly-leaf the finder of these books learned their rightful owner to be of the house of Fraisier.