“I like to be in a crowd,” he told Eve, “with plenty of youngsters about. There’s nothing I like better than sitting on the sands with a pipe and a paper, watching the kids making castles and pies, and listening to Punch and Judy. Seems to make one feel young.” She liked Mr. Parfit, and often wondered why he had not married. Perhaps he was one of those men who preferred being a very excellent uncle rather than a bored father, for she gathered that he was fond of other people’s children, and was always ready with his pennies. He had a sly, laborious, porcine humour, and a chuckle that made his cheeks wrinkle and his eyes grow smaller. He was exceedingly polite to Eve, and though at times he seemed inclined to be good-naturedly personal, she knew that it was part of his nature and not a studied attempt at familiarity. Eve was glad to have this very human person to talk to, for she found life increasingly lonely, now that Kate Duveen had gone. Mr. Parfit had a fatherly way with him, and though his culture was crude and raw, he had a shrewd outlook upon things in general that was not unamusing. London, too, was in the thick of the mud and muck of a wet winter, and Eve found that she was growing more susceptible to the depressing influence of bad weather. It spoilt her morning’s walk, and caused a quite unnecessary expenditure on trams and ’buses, and roused her to a kind of rage when she pulled up her blind in the morning and saw the usual drizzle making the slate roofs glisten. She associated her new studio with rain, for there always seemed to be a pattering sound upon the corrugated iron roof when she shut herself in to work. She grew more moody, and her moodiness drove her into desperate little dissipations, such as a seat in the upper circle at His Majesty’s or the Haymarket, a dinner at an Italian restaurant, or a tea at Fuller’s. She found London less depressing after dark, and learnt to understand how the exotic city, with its night jewels glittering, appealed to people who were weary of greyness. Her sun-hunger and her country-hunger had become so importunate that she had spent one Sunday in the country, taking train to Guildford, and walking up to the Hog’s Back. The Surrey hills had seemed dim and sad, and away yonder she had imagined Fernhill, with its fir woods and its great pleasaunce. She had felt rather like an outcast, and the day had provoked such sadness in her that she went no more into the country.