CHAPTER VI.
In which Professor Higginson Begins to Taste the Sweets of Fame
When Professor Higginson reached the door of his lodgings the Ormeston day had begun.
The house was one of a row of eighteenth-century buildings, dignified and a trifle decayed, representing in the geology of the town the strata of its first mercantile fortunes. It was here that the first division between the rich and poor of industrial Ormeston had begun to show itself four generations ago, and these roomy, half-deserted houses were the first fruits of that economic change.
But Professor Higginson was not thinking of all that as he came up to the well-remembered door (which in the despair of the past nights he had sometimes thought he would never see again). He was thinking of how he looked with his horribly crushed and dirty shirt front, his ruined collar, and his bedraggled evening clothes upon that bright morning. In this reflection he was aided by
