train--and in each case he returned on the Monday morning.

Thus, as regards that portion of his time which was most his own, he may be said almost to have lived at Surbiton Cottage, and if on any Sunday he omitted to make his appearance, the omission was ascribed by the ladies of Hampton, in some half-serious sort of joke, to metropolitan allurements and temptations which he ought to have withstood.
When Tudor and Norman came to live together, it was natural enough that Tudor also should be taken down to Surbiton Cottage.
Norman could not leave him on every Saturday without telling him much of his friends whom he went to visit, and he could hardly say much of them without offering to introduce his companion to them.

Tudor accordingly went there, and it soon came to pass that he also very frequently spent his Sundays at Hampton.
It must be remembered that at this time, the time, that is, of Norman and Tudor's first entrance on their London life, the girls at Surbiton Cottage were mere girls--that is, little more than children; they had not, as it were, got their wings so as to be able to fly away when the provocation to do so might come; they were, in short, Gertrude and Linda Woodward, and not the Miss Woodwards: their drawers came down below their frocks, instead of their frocks below their drawers; and in lieu of studying the French language, as is done by grown-up ladies, they did French lessons, as is the case with ladies who are not grown-up.

Under these circumstances there was no embarrassment as to what the young people should call each other, and they soon became very intimate as Harry and Alaric, Gertrude and Linda.
It is not, however, to be conceived that Alaric Tudor at once took the same footing in the house as Norman.

This was far from being the case.