CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.
A FRESH START.
It is supposed to be the duty of every well-conducted author, after the curtain has fallen on the final tableau of his little drama, to lift it, or half lift it, for a momentary last glimpse at the principal actors.
I am not quite sure whether this is not an encouragement to laziness on the part of the reader.

In most respects he is as well able to picture the future of Jeffreys, and Raby, and Percy, and Tim as I am.
I cannot show them to you in all the dignity of an honoured old age, because they are only a year or two older to-day than they were when Percy and Jeffreys took that little run together down to Cumberland.
Nor can I show them to you, after the fashion of a fairy tale, "married and living happily ever afterwards," because when I met Jeffreys in the Strand the other day, he told me that although he had just been appointed to the control of a great public library in the North, it would still be some months, possibly a year, before he would be able to set up house on his own account.
However, he seemed contented on the whole to wait a bit; and in a long talk we had as we walked up and down the Embankment I heard a good many scraps of information which made it possible to satisfy the reader on one or two points about which he may still be anxious.
Jeffreys and Percy stayed at Wildtree for a month, and the time was one of the happiest both of them ever spent.

They did nothing exciting.
They read some Aristophanes, and added some new "dodge" to their wonderful automatic bookcase.

They went up Wild Pike one bright winter's day and had a glorious view from the top.

And on the ledge coming back they sat and rested awhile on a spot they both remembered well.