It was not much of a
consolation. No. But then this is a world of small mercies, where some of
us get an hour or some mean portion of a day when we want a lifetime.
CHAPTER XV
THE TOUCH OF NATURE
A sense, when first I fronted him,
Said, "Trust him not!"
After successfully carrying through the purchase of mourning stationery
and attending to other important items connected with sorrow in its
worldly shape, Arthur Agar went back to Cambridge. There was enough of
the woman in his nature to enable him to cherish grief and nurse it
lovingly, as some women (not the best of them) do. In this attitude
towards the world there was none of that dogged going about his business
which characterises the ordinary man from whose life something has
slipped out.
He wandered by the banks of the Cam with mourning in his mien, and his
cherished friends took sympathetic coffee with him after Hall. They spoke
of Jem with that fervid admiration which University men honestly feel for
one a few years their senior who has already "done something.
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