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Fleming invited them to meet him at luncheon. He was now
a man of thirty-two, tall and lean, but with the same wild
and unkempt look they remembered on him as a boy. His
clothes, ill-made and shabby, were put on untidily. His hair
was as black and as long as ever, and he had plainly never
learned to brush it; it fell over his forehead with every ges-
ture, and he had a quick movement of the hand with which
he pushed it back from his eyes. He had a black moustache
and a beard which came high up on his face almost to the
cheek-bones, He talked to the masters quite easily, as though
he had parted from them a week or two before; he was evi-
dently delighted to see them. He seemed unconscious of the
strangeness of the position and appeared not to notice any
oddness in being addressed as Mr. Perkins.
When he bade them good-bye, one of the masters, for
something to say, remarked that he was allowing himself
plenty of time to catch his train.
‘I want to go round and have a look at the shop,’ he an-
swered cheerfully.
There was a distinct embarrassment. They wondered that
he could be so tactless, and to make it worse Dr. Fleming
had not heard what he said. His wife shouted it in his ear.
‘He wants to go round and look at his father’s old shop.’
Only Tom Perkins was unconscious of the humiliation
which the whole party felt. He turned to Mrs. Fleming.
‘Who’s got it now, d’you know?’
She could hardly answer. She was very angry.
‘It’s still a linendraper’s,’ she said bitterly. ‘Grove is the
name. We don’t deal there any more.’

0 Of Human Bondage