"
A deeper tinge of green spread itself over his face.
He rose suddenly and made towards the hedge. Before he reached it,
however, he stopped and addressed me, but without turning round.
"If you follow me, young 'un, or look, I'll punch your head," he
said swiftly, and disappeared with a gurgle.
He left at the end of the terms and I did not see him again until
we were both young men. Then one day I ran against him in Oxford
Street, and he asked me to come and spend a few days with his
people in Surrey.
I found him wan-looking and depressed, and every now and then he
sighed. During a walk across the common he cheered up
considerably, but the moment we got back to the house door he
seemed to recollect himself, and began to sigh again. He ate no
dinner whatever, merely sipping a glass of wine and crumbling a
piece of bread. I was troubled at noticing this, but his
relatives--a maiden aunt, who kept house, two elder sisters, and a
weak-eyed female cousin who had left her husband behind her in
India--were evidently charmed. They glanced at each other, and
nodded and smiled. Once in a fit of abstraction he swallowed a bit
of crust, and immediately they all looked pained and surprised.
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