(They call the place the
Royal College of Science in these latter days.) He carried in his
right hand a shiny black bag, well stuffed with text-books, notes, and
apparatus for the, forthcoming session; and in his left was a book
that the bag had no place for, a book with gilt edges, and its binding
very carefully protected by a brown paper cover.
The lapse of time had asserted itself upon his upper lip in an
inaggressive but indisputable moustache, in an added inch or so of
stature, and in his less conscious carriage. For he no longer felt
that universal attention he believed in at eighteen; it was beginning
to dawn on him indeed that quite a number of people were entirely
indifferent to the fact of his existence. But if less conscious, his
carriage was decidedly more confident--as of one with whom the world
goes well.
His costume was--with one exception--a tempered black,--mourning put
to hard uses and "cutting up rusty." The mourning was for his mother,
who had died more than a year before the date when this story resumes,
and had left him property that capitalized at nearly a hundred pounds,
a sum which Lewisham hoarded jealously in the Savings Bank, paying
only for such essentials as university fees, and the books and
instruments his brilliant career as a student demanded.
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