Passing of the Third Floor Back | Page 5

much to do for the next half hour, till Cook comes back. I'll see to the door if you'd like a run out?" suggested Mrs. Pennycherry.
"It would be nice," agreed the girl so soon as she had recovered power of speech; "it's just the time of day I like."
"Don't be longer than the half hour," added Mrs. Pennycherry.
Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square, assembled after dinner in the drawing-room, discussed the stranger with that freedom and frankness characteristic of Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square, towards the absent.
"Not what I call a smart young man," was the opinion of Augustus Longcord, who was something in the City.
"Thpeaking for mythelf," commented his partner Isidore, "hav'n'th any uthe for the thmart young man. Too many of him, ath it ith."
"Must be pretty smart if he's one too many for you," laughed his partner.
There was this to be said for the repartee of Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square: it was simple of construction and easy of comprehension.
"Well it made me feel good just looking at him," declared Miss Kite, the highly coloured. "It was his clothes, I suppose--made me think of Noah and the ark--all that sort of thing."
"It would be clothes that would make you think--if anything," drawled the languid Miss Devine. She was a tall, handsome girl, engaged at the moment in futile efforts to recline with elegance and comfort combined upon a horsehair sofa. Miss Kite, by reason of having secured the only easy-chair, was unpopular that evening; so that Miss Devine's remark received from the rest of the company more approbation than perhaps it merited.
"Is that intended to be clever, dear, or only rude?" Miss Kite requested to be informed.
"Both," claimed Miss Devine.
"Myself? I must confess," shouted the tall young lady's father, commonly called the Colonel, "I found him a fool."
"I noticed you seemed to be getting on very well together," purred his wife, a plump, smiling little lady.
"Possibly we were," retorted the Colonel. "Fate has accustomed me to the society of fools."
"Isn't it a pity to start quarrelling immediately after dinner, you two," suggested their thoughtful daughter from the sofa, "you'll have nothing left to amuse you for the rest of the evening."
"He didn't strike me as a conversationalist," said the lady who was cousin to a baronet; "but he did pass the vegetables before he helped himself. A little thing like that shows breeding."
"Or that he didn't know you and thought maybe you'd leave him half a spoonful," laughed Augustus the wit.
"What I can't make out about him--" shouted the Colonel.
The stranger entered the room.
The Colonel, securing the evening paper, retired into a corner. The highly coloured Kite, reaching down from the mantelpiece a paper fan, held it coyly before her face. Miss Devine sat upright on the horse-hair sofa, and rearranged her skirts.
"Know anything?" demanded Augustus of the stranger, breaking the somewhat remarkable silence.
The stranger evidently did not understand. It was necessary for Augustus, the witty, to advance further into that odd silence.
"What's going to pull off the Lincoln handicap? Tell me, and I'll go out straight and put my shirt upon it."
"I think you would act unwisely," smiled the stranger; "I am not an authority upon the subject."
"Not! Why they told me you were Captain Spy of the _Sporting Life_--in disguise."
It would have been difficult for a joke to fall more flat. Nobody laughed, though why Mr. Augustus Longcord could not understand, and maybe none of his audience could have told him, for at Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square Mr. Augustus Longcord passed as a humorist. The stranger himself appeared unaware that he was being made fun of.
"You have been misinformed," assured him the stranger.
"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Augustus Longcord.
"It is nothing," replied the stranger in his sweet low voice, and passed on.
"Well what about this theatre," demanded Mr. Longcord of his friend and partner; "do you want to go or don't you?" Mr. Longcord was feeling irritable.
"Goth the ticketh--may ath well," thought Isidore.
"Damn stupid piece, I'm told."
"Motht of them thupid, more or leth. Pity to wathte the ticketh," argued Isidore, and the pair went out.
"Are you staying long in London?" asked Miss Kite, raising her practised eyes towards the stranger.
"Not long," answered the stranger. "At least I do not know. It depends."
An unusual quiet had invaded the drawing-room of Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square, generally noisy with strident voices about this hour. The Colonel remained engrossed in his paper. Mrs. Devine sat with her plump white hands folded on her lap, whether asleep or not it was impossible to say. The lady who was cousin to a baronet had shifted her chair beneath the gasolier, her eyes bent on her everlasting crochet work. The languid Miss Devine had crossed to the piano, where she sat fingering softly the tuneless keys, her back to the cold barely-furnished room.
"Sit down!" commanded saucily Miss Kite, indicating with