Caroline Crescent and “Clovelly” had taken possession of Tod Western.

Through all those rapidly moving months he was being peacefully persuaded towards middle-class culture. The women had conceived an interest in Tod, Miss Truebody of St. Helen’s Terrace who lent him her Tennyson and persuaded him to go occasionally to St. Alban’s Church, Mrs. Rathbone Cragg, Bertha Cragg, even the girl who typed in the office. Tod had become attractive to women. He piqued the sex in them, and with an innocence that was all the more provoking in that he was not acutely conscious just then of the sex in himself.

Tod was finding life very interesting. He was so busy doing things that he did not drift into any of those sauntering moods that are apt to end in the sentimental discovery of petticoats and ribbons. He had grown to love his work, and so keen was he that he procured books on architecture and building construction and sat up at night reading. His day began with a swim or a brisk walk. He played football that winter for the West Shaston Sports Club and in the summer he spent the evenings at tennis. There were no gaps in his day, no dawdling interludes. Sex was dormant in him, waiting like a cunning woman for the moment when the young male should tire of merely hitting a ball and developing his strength.

Sex too had relieved Tod of Mr. Frederick Rathbone Cragg’s mentorship. The impressive Fred was cultivating the elder Miss Horrox, and he had no time now for the tutelage of Tod. His sister had slipped unobtrusively into his place. Tod went very often to “Clovelly,” and came to look on Fred’s sister as a jolly girl without any nonsense. The sex in her never touched him, and Bertha, with that unusual instinct of hers, hid her sex and played the man. She was in love with Tod, and she waited.

Yet her secret tenderness, the love of a clever yet rather plain girl for a healthy, game-playing boy, watched over Tod jealously and followed him into all the corners of his life. She knew more about Tod perhaps than Tod knew about himself. She knew how he spent his day, and how he passed his evenings; Miss Truebody told her, for Miss Truebody owed much to the Craggs. And she was at one with Mr. Julian Burgetrode in her sensing of the unusual in Tod. She knew that he was quite unlike any young male thing she had ever met; there was a directness about him, a kind of delightful simplicity, the look of going a far journey in his blue eyes, a promise of something clean and adventurous in his squarish head and brown face. For Tod was clean, and it was his cleanness that appealed to Bertha Cragg, who was a sensitive, a spiritual “sport” in that very material and middle-class world.

Tod found it very easy to talk to her. She was a comrade, just like a man friend, and he had not discovered the woman behind the frank and game-loving girl. She had very pleasant brown eyes, white teeth, and rather a shapely figure, and she could play a fast game at tennis and swim almost as well as Tod. They made a pleasant, laughing, unselfconscious pair, and Mrs. Rathbone Cragg folded her hands over it, and did not interfere. Tod had a future and some capital. Mr. Julian Burgetrode loomed big in the North.

Tod’s quaint franknesses were not unlike the sayings of his father, and Bertha caught them in her lap and then hid them away in her heart.

“What do people want to make money for? It’s much jollier doing things for love.”

“I should like to be able to swim across the Channel.”

“I can’t stand cheats.”

“Wasting your time with a lot of girls!”

She laughed over that saying, with a little twinge of self-pity—yet she knew that he had spoken the truth. He did not spend his evenings loafing round the bandstand, playing with a lot of fluffy young flappers or young women with red necks and chests and sun-scorched faces. There were no huddlings into dark corners, giggles and a curiosity that might end in a little mock protesting scream. And she was glad.

Tod saw very little of old Shaston, the Shaston of the Flowerdews and the Snapes. Kitty Flowerdew was married to Edwin Rook, and was expecting a baby, but Tod knew nothing of that. Mossup was married too and settled in that little white cottage of his, and Tod went and had tea with them one Sunday afternoon. Mossup took him all over the house and garden, and simpered with pride.

“Nice little kitchen, isn’t it? Olive’s a wonder. Did you ever see such pots and pans? Come and see the chickens. Yes, nothing but egg-boxes, old chap; the house took six at ninepence each, not so bad. Eggs? Oh, yes, we’ll get plenty of eggs.”

After tea he led Tod into the garden and became mysteriously confidential.

“I’m setting up on my own this autumn. Little shop in Duke Street; just two windows and a door in between. Olive’s going to do the hats. She’s a wonder at hats. So if you can send anyone along, old chap——”

Tod promised to tell all West Shaston and St. Margarets of Mossup’s shop. Mossup was such a good chap, even though he did not play games.

One evening Tod met Bob Twine. He was strolling back from the St. Margarets Tennis Club, a brown young man in very white flannels, meditating deeply on the improving of his forehand drive.

“Hallo, Tod.”

“Hallo, Bob, old man. Haven’t seen you for years.”

Bob Twine looked shabbily smart, and that black chin of his seemed blacker than ever.

“Say, you are some knut, kid! How’s life?”

“Quite good,” said Tod.

Bob looked him over with the eyes of a connoisseur. There was no doubt about it, Tod was “it.” His flannel trousers were nicely creased, his buckskin shoes white as milk, his Oxford shirt, soft collar and tie the best productions of Messrs. Mummery, the gentleman’s outfitters in Pomeroy Place. Tod’s hat was at the correct angle. He had collected and absorbed all the subtle details pertaining to costume, and he carried them with that utter lack of self-consciousness that puzzles and piques the more florid bounder.

“They are making a pukka gent of you, old man. Quite the Burlington, what!”

“Shut up,” said Tod.

“It’s a fact. Real West Shaston china, the genuine article. Got a dress suit, I suppose?”

“Not yet.”

“It will come, old man. Play bridge and go to dances, and eat strawberries and cream in people’s gardens.”

“Shut up. Come and have some supper one night.”

Twine refused, and refused with a kind of awkward sulkiness.

“Rather full up just now, kid. I’ve got a girl, and she takes some satisfying. Well, don’t forget us all.”

“I shan’t,” said Tod, “but why not bring your—your fiancée along with you.”

“That’s some word, old man. But she isn’t that—yet; that’s the trouble. Well, so long.”

They parted, Tod wondering why he thought Bob Twine rather a coarse beast, and whether he—Tod—had changed as Twine said he had. Twine loafed away, smiling a queer, sensual, slightly cynical smile.

“They’ve got him,” he thought, “he’s going up into the real respectable pew. Would I swop? Damn it, no! You can’t be respectable and have such a time with the girls.”

Ten minutes later he met a fair-haired, and richly coloured young woman on the parade. She had been waiting in one of the shelters, eating sweets and reading a paper novel. And the face of the young woman was the face of “Giggles,” Miss Millie Hornblower, to whom Tod had once given a German-silver ring.

The greater part of a year had passed since Mr. Julian Burgetrode had last played the Colossus in his toy-town, but he reappeared one day at the Hotel Majestic, and two evenings later Miss Truebody found him on her doorstep. The bell of No. 11 St. Helen’s Terrace had been rung with unnecessary vigour, and Miss Truebody’s instinct was to protest. The maid was out, and she answered the door herself.

“Yes? What do you want, please?”

She had meant to remark that the inmates of No. 11 were not deaf, but people did not use sarcasm on Mr. Burgetrode. The fierce blue eyes, and the red tie, and the masterful brown face were so very vivid and arrestive. Mr. Burgetrode was always treated like a big and rather doubtful tempered dog, and Miss Truebody forgot about the bell.

“Is Tod Western in?”

“Mr. Western? No I think he is at the tennis club.”

“Will he be long?”

Mr. Burgetrode’s fierce manner quite agitated Miss Truebody.

“Oh, no, he may be in any minute; you see, he always comes home and has a little supper and studies before going to bed.”

“Ha!” said Mr. Burgetrode, and Miss Truebody winced.

“He studies quite hard, you know, such a nice, gentlemanly, quiet fellow.”

“I’ll come in and wait.”

“Oh, certainly. Are you——”

“My name is Burgetrode. Will you show me his room, please?”

Miss Truebody continued her “agitato” on her way up the stairs.

“Quite a healthy, sunny room, I’m sure. I have got him a nice arm-chair; the windows look south, you know, and he has his meals in my sitting-room. Yes, it has been very hot to-day, hasn’t it?”

“Very,” said Mr. Burgetrode tersely, wondering if the lady was married and had a daughter. He did not believe in a man marrying before thirty, and he did not want Tod to marry any girl in Shaston. Mr. Burgetrode had unusual views on sex and marriage.

Sheer nervousness kept Miss Truebody holding the door handle of Tod’s room and making polite conversation.

“I expect he’ll be playing tennis with Miss Cragg, Mr. Burgetrode. Such a very nice girl, and Mrs. Cragg is one of the kindest and most Christian of women. Yes, he does smoke, just a little, poor dear boy, but such mild tobacco, I’m sure.”

Mr. Burgetrode had picked up a brier pipe, and he took not the slightest notice of Miss Truebody. Believing in allowing such clockwork ladies to run themselves down, he idled round Tod’s room, looking at the books and the furniture with the interest of a man who had vivid memories of his own youth. Tod’s blue bathing suit was hanging over the back of a chair, and Miss Truebody, with great decency and presence of mind, threw a towel over it, and then “chasséd” towards the door.

“You’ll find that chair quite comfortable, Mr. Burgetrode.”

“I have no doubt of it, madam,” he said, removing the towel from the blue bathing suit, and staring at it fixedly till Miss Truebody had closed the door.

He was very interested in Tod’s room. The Truebody part of it was quaint and old maidish and precise, but Tod’s share was that of the healthy young male. There were glass lustre candlesticks, and a little white marble cross on the mantelpiece. The furniture was mahogany of the most obviously Victorian pattern. It appeared that Miss Truebody had dabbled much with the paint brush at some period of her life, and the splasher above the washstand showed a bunch of white Madonna lilies. A couple of tambourines that hung one on each side of the overmantel had been decorated with very wooden and wall-eyed tom-tits balancing with a grim determination on bits of twig. But the room was snug and clean and full of Tod and his possessions, tobacco tins, books, a pair of trousers thrown on the bed, a collar and tie and a pair of mauve socks on the chest of drawers, a little table in the window with ink, writing paper and notebooks. Julian Burgetrode picked up some of Tod’s books, and found that he was reading architecture, and practical building, and an elementary handbook on sanitation. Mr. Burgetrode smiled. The Craggs had sent him very flattering reports on Tod.

His protégé arrived and found Mr. Burgetrode sitting side-saddle on the window-sill, and enjoying that evening glimpse of old Shaston and the sea.

“Well, Master Ajax?”

Tod was pleased to see Mr. Burgetrode, and Mr. Burgetrode was pleased with the pleasure on the boy’s brown face.

“I’m sorry you had to wait, sir; I would have stayed in if I had known.”

“Not a bit of it. You’ve grown.”

“Have I?” laughed Tod.

“Let’s see, how old are you?”

“Nearly twenty, sir.”

“Wish I could be twenty again. You are coming out to dinner with me, Tod, yes, just as you are. This seems a clean and comfortable sort of place.”

“Miss Truebody is very kind, a good sort,” said Tod.

“And religious?”

“Very religious, sir. People are very kind—and I am having a good time, and I like the work.”

“Houses?”

“I never get tired of houses, sir, all sorts of houses. I’m reading quite a lot.”

“Excellent!” said Mr. Burgetrode, with a queer gleam of the eyes. “Now come along to dinner.”

Tod dined at the “Majestic,” and Mr. Burgetrode saw that the lad had changed. He had developed poise, and he was no longer embarrassed by waiters and people in evening dress. He had put on new social clothes. But the real Tod was there as of old, frank, fearless quaintly direct and eager, a happier Tod perhaps, a boy who had the makings of a very big man.

He talked away to Mr. Burgetrode, and if the “Colossus” asked a few questions they were very significant and pertinent questions, and Tod responded to them with ingenuous readiness.

His talk was all of houses, not only of houses as they were, but houses as they might be and ought to be. He was interested in the conceiving and building of houses and cottages, and in the atmosphere of their surroundings. Tod had seen some of the “county” houses during the year, and the beauty and the soft serenity of many of them had left a vivid picture in his brain. He had not forgotten that house-hunting adventure with Arthur Mossup, and those stuffy and dreary little grey boxes at the back of Shaston town, and Tod, with the natural idealism of youth, believed that such mean beastliness in brick should never have been perpetrated.

“There ought to be gardens and trees,” he said, “and plenty of places to play in. Why should people live in rabbit-hutches?”

“The speculator’s idea of economics, my boy.”

“Well, it oughtn’t to be,” said Tod; “and all those dirty little houses, each with a dirty little kitchen, and making more dirt and mess. And no baths.”

“You would like to make a new town all out of your own head, with gardens and baths, and playing grounds, and concert halls and fine cookhouses?”

“I should,” said Tod, his eyes alight, “but who’d pay for it?”

“Exactly!” said Mr. Burgetrode; “we don’t like paying for other people’s health and comfort.”

It was rather obvious to Mr. Burgetrode that the Craggs had not pushed Tod against the financial thorns of the business. He had not got himself pricked and exasperated as he had done in the shops of Messrs. Flowerdew and Snape. The Craggs were respectable people. They did not perpetuate the more flagrant cynicisms, and West Shaston was too comfortable and well fed and wealthy to bother about elemental economics. The Craggs had made money rather easily; they had not developed the clawing hands, the fierce masticating muscles and the canine teeth of the average Flowerdew. Tod had not yet discovered “commercial competition,” that devil god of the industrial age, the god of the unprincipled and the greedy.

Mr. Burgetrode even persuaded Tod to betray his views on girls, and discovered, more by inference, that Tod was not interested in them for the moment. Mr. Burgetrode had introduced the Craggs into the conversation, and he heard all about Fred Cragg the impressive, Mrs. Cragg whose lap was full of charity, and Bertha Cragg who could swim like a man and place a back-hand volley down the side line with fine precision.

“She’s a good sort,” said Tod; “no nonsense, just like a man, you know. Can’t stand the giggling sort, all ribbons and hat brim. The Craggs have been very kind to me, sir, very kind indeed.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Mr. Burgetrode, beginning to wonder whether Miss Cragg was not a rather dangerous young woman. He did not want Tod to marry for many years to come, and he did not want him to marry a girl of the middle classes.