the fixed stares of the young serving-maids who were cleaning the doorsteps and the unrestrained remarks of youths who passed him in their delivery of milk. The first with their eyes, the second more plainly with their lips, expressed the opinion that he was no longer of an age for wanton pleasures, and he was annoyed and flustered to hear himself compared to animals of a salacious kind, notably the goat.
It was not to be wondered at that, being what he was, a man who had never had to think or act in his life. Professor Higginson's one desire was to put his familiar door between himself and such tormentors.
He rang the bell furiously and knocked more furiously still. An errand-boy, a plumber's apprentice upon his way to work, and a road scavenger joined a milkman, and watched him at this exercise in a little group. It was a group which threatened to become larger, for Ormeston is an early town. Professor Higginson, forgetting that Mrs. Randle, his landlady, might not be up at such an hour, gave another furious assault upon the knocker, suddenly remembered his latch key, brought it out, and was nervously feeling for the keyhole amid jeers upon his aim, when the door
