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It was some ten years since he had been abroad in August, a month he had been always accustomed to spend in Scotch visits; and these young girls, with whom the Tyrol seemed to swarm, of all European nationalities other than English, still in or just out of the schoolroom; hatless and fearless; with their knapsacks on their backs, sometimes with ice-axes in their hands; climbing peaks and passes with their fathers and brothers; playing lawn-tennis like young men, and shewing their shapely forms sometimes, when it was a question of attacking the heights, in knicker-bocker costume, and at other times in fresh white dresses and bright-coloured jerseys, without a hint of waist; these young Atalantas, budding and bloomed, made the strongest impression upon him, as of a new race.

Of the merit of his Knicker-bocker, and New York stories, we cannot pretend to judge.

Daylight is friendly to man toiling under a sun which warms his heart; and cloudy soft nights are more kindly to our littleness. I nearly ran back again to my lighted parlour; Fyne fussing in a knicker-bocker suit before the hosts of heaven, on a shadowy earth, about a transient, phantom-like girl, seemed too ridiculous to associate with.

Many as are the wealthy houses I have been called upon to enter in the line of my profession, I had never crossed the threshold of such an one as this before, and impervious as I am to any foolish sentimentalities, I felt a certain degree of awe at the thought of invading with police investigation, this home of ancient Knicker-bocker respectability.

Philip's Church, a fine old Norman pile with some lovely brasses and crusaders' tombs. Here I had a piece of luck fell in with the vicar. One of the jolly old port-wine and knicker-bocker sort: an old Oxford man, as it happened. I pumped him a little about the history of the church, and in his delight at finding an American who cared for such matters he talked freely.

Never in all his life had he listened to such a frankly cold-blooded argument as that put forth by the insufferable Knicker-bocker. In the end the big New Yorker saw only the laughable side of the little New Yorker's plight. After all, he was a harmless egoist, from whom no girl could expect much in the way of recompense.

"Let's strike for the afternoon and call it a holiday," suggested Buck. Emma McChesney turned. The train was gone. "T.A., you'll never grow up." "Never want to. Come on, let's play hooky, Emma." "Can't. I've a dozen letters to get out, and Miss Loeb wants to show me that new knicker-bocker design of hers." They drove back to the office almost in silence.

A signpost directed him to Fleckfield, and presently he came to the village and to the little inn in the middle of the single street. It was a rustic looking place, with the usual bench and table outside it; and on the former was seated a young fellow in a knicker-bocker suit.

Above all, he was excited about the little boys. His own kind had never come in his way before, his chief playfellow being Amice, who was so much older as to play with him condescendingly and always give way to him. There was a large family in a neighbouring lodging containing what he respectfully called 'big knicker-bocker boys, who excited his intense admiration, and drew him like a magnet.

Daylight is friendly to man toiling under a sun which warms his heart; and cloudy soft nights are more kindly to our littleness. I nearly ran back again to my lighted parlour; Fyne fussing in a knicker-bocker suit before the hosts of heaven, on a shadowy earth, about a transient, phantom-like girl, seemed too ridiculous to associate with.