And here is another touch: the valuable cake basket was returned with a heavy dinge in one place, which the jeweller affirms was not there when he packed it in tissue paper and shavings in its box with the card bearing the inscription: “To dear Constance, with best wishes from--------” That is why he refused to take it back. It was the son of this lady whose generosity was so spurned who, on leaving the rather second-class public school at which he received a sort of education, gravely said to another boy from Mallingham who had also just been finished-- “I suppose I'll often see you at Mallingham, old chap, as we are both living there, and I'm sure that I should be very glad to have a chat with you now and then; but, of course, you won't expect me to acknowledge you if I am walking with my mother or sister.” “Why not?” asked the other boy. “Oh, my dear fellow, can't you see that it would never do?” said the first. “You know that your people are not in our set. You can't expect that because we happen to have been three years in the same house, we are in the same social position at home. But, as you know, there's nothing of the snob about me, and any time that we meet in one of the side streets, and even at the unfashionable end of High Street, I'll certainly nod to you. But that's the farthest that I can be expected to go.” The other boy certainly expected him to go very much farther even than the unfashionable end of the High Street, and ventured to delimitate the boundaries of the place, and to say a word or two respecting its climate and the fitness of his companions and all his family for a permanent residence there. Being a biggish lad, and enjoying a reputation for being opposed to peace at any price, he could express his inmost feelings without being deterred by any inconvenient reprisals. The other did not even respond to his exuberance upon this occasion. He sulked in the corner of the railway carriage where the conversation took place, and he has been sulking ever since. IV.--THE ENTERPRISE OF MALLINGHAM It was a gentleman who travelled in the latest styles in soft goods who was heard to affirm that Mallingham was not a town: it was a dormitory. He doubtless spoke from the horizon line of soft goods, having in his eye certain of those firms who still do business in the concave side of ancient bay windows, and have not yet been lured on to fortnightly cheap sales behind a sheet of plate-glass. A commercial traveller takes some time to recover his selfrespect after importuning a possible client in the con-cavity of an eighteenth-century window of what was once a dainty parlour, but is now a dingy shop. [Illustration: 0139]