These recollections and reflections chilled him a little as he walked along; but soon happier thoughts came. The scenes of his old life began to pass before him like a succession of pictures. Mr. Cattley’s room, with all the books lying about, and the two photographs, her own and John’s, which Elly had fastened over the curate’s mantelpiece when they ended their lessons--would they still be there in the same place? and how had Mr. Cattley made up his mind to go away? and how was it possible to imagine Percy at the reading-desk and in the pulpit as Mr. Cattley’s successor? This thought made John laugh. And then he seemed to see the rectory garden rolling out before him, and Elly and himself coming so very quietly down the walk after that kiss which had been such a solemnity. Would she recollect that, and grow red (as John felt himself to do all alone in the soft, uninquisitive light of the May morning), when she met him again? and had she remembered what she had said about the pear-tree and her algebra, which she was to study there? She was never very good at her algebra: that was the very best thing she could have been doing when she wanted to think of John. He came along smiling, thinking of all that, not of the old house and the old people, which were too sacred, which were put off to a time when he should be less conscious of the curiosity and amusement and wonder of coming back to the old place, and seeing it awake, as the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ must have seen the world awake round her, rubbing its eyes and stretching forth after years of suspended animation, taking up once more its natural life. The ‘Green Man’ stood open, but not with the dissipated air, the look of tremendous wickedness and riot which it once had borne. He thought it an innocent-looking little village alehouse now, with no harm about it: and Johnson, blinking over his early pipe at the door, no monster at all, not even bloated, but very much like other men. Mrs. Box had finished taking down her shutters, and the perambulator stood at her door just as of old, and the milkman was coming along with his shining cans, looking up and shading his eyes from the sun, as he looked in obedience to a question from the woman he was serving, as to who the gentleman was who was crossing the road towards Mrs. Sibley’s. ‘One o’ Mr. Percy’s friends,’ the milkman said, by way of maintaining his character for universal knowledge, yet not committing himself. It was curious to John to see that nobody recognised him, neither the porter at the station nor the postman whom he met, and whom he felt so strong an inclination to stop and ask for the letters as of old. He felt pleased, and yet a little troubled and somewhat desolate. The great difference there must be in him he took for granted must be to his advantage: and yet it was dismal to pass like a stranger through a place which he knew so well.