In the mother country, men in short jackets and
round collars emerge from the preparatory schools; in
the daughter lands boys in tailcoats conduct serious
affairs. Alec and Oliver, in the business, were frivolous
enough as to the feminine interest. For all Dr Drummond's
expressed and widely known views upon the subject, it
was a common thing for one or both of these young men to
stray from the family pew on Sunday evenings to the
services of other communions, thereafter to walk home in
the dusk under the maples with some attractive young
person, and be sedately invited to finish the evening on
her father's verandah. Neither of them was guiltless of
silk ties knitted or handkerchiefs initialled by certain
fingers; without repeating scandal, one might say by
various fingers. For while the ultimate import of these
matters was not denied in Elgin, there was a general
feeling against giving too much meaning to them, probably
originating in a reluctance among heads of families to
add to their responsibilities. These early spring
indications were belittled and laughed at; so much so
that the young people them selves hardly took them
seriously, but regarded them as a form of amusement almost
conventional. Nothing would have surprised or embarrassed
them more than to learn that their predilections had an
imperative corollary, that anything should, of necessity,
"come of it.
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