not preaching little sermons, and you know it well enough." He laughed,
but it was a hard sort of mirth. "Perhaps you forgot to remember that,
though," he sneeringly added. "It was the work of your hands."

"That's why I should remember to forget it--I am the child of modesty."
Charley touched the corners of his mouth with his tongue, as though his
lips were dry, and his eyes wandered to a saloon a little farther down
the street.

"Modesty is your curse," rejoined Brown mockingly.

"Once when you preached at me you said that beauty was my curse."
Charley laughed a curt, distant little laugh which was no more the
spontaneous humour lying for ever behind his thoughts than his eye-glass
was the real sight of his eyes, though since childhood this laugh and his
eye-glass were as natural to all expression of himself as John Brown's
outward and showy frankness did not come from the real John Brown.

John Brown looked him up and down quickly, then fastened his eyes on the
ruddy cheeks of his old friend. "Do they call you Beauty now as they
used to?" he asked, rather insolently.

"No. They only say, 'There goes Charley Steele!'" The tongue again
touched the corners of the mouth, and the eyes wandered to the doorway
down the street, over which was written in French: "Jean Jolicoeur,
Licensed to sell wine, beer, and other spirituous and fermented liquors."

Just then an archdeacon of the cathedral passed them, bowed gravely to
Charley, glanced at John Brown, turned colour slightly, and then with a
cold stare passed on too quickly for dignity.