Rodens Corner | Page 6

understand. My respected uncle is sure to be sunning his waistcoat in
Piccadilly. Yes, there he is. Isn't he splendid? How do, uncle?" and
Cornish waved a grey Suède glove with a gay nod.
"How are the Ferribys?" inquired Major White, who belonged to the
curt school.
"Oh, they seem to be well. Uncle is full of that charity which at all
events has its headquarters in the home counties. Aunt--well, aunt is
saving money."
"And Miss Ferriby?" inquired White, looking straight in front of him.
Cornish glanced quickly at his companion. "Oh, Joan?" he answered.
"She is all right. Full of energy, you know--all the fads in their
courses."
"You get 'em too."
"Oh yes; I get them too. Buttonholes come and buttonholes go. Have
you noticed it? They get large. Neapolitan violets all over your left
shoulder one day, and no flowers at all the week after." Cornish spoke

with a gravity befitting the subject. He was, it seemed a student of
human nature in his way. "Of course," he added, laying an impressive
forefinger on White's gold-laced cuff, "it would never do if the world
remained stationary."
"Never," said the major, darkly. "Never."
They were talking to pass the time. Joan Ferriby had come between
them, as a woman is bound to come between two men sooner or later.
Neither knew what the other thought of Joan Ferriby, or if he thought
of her at all. Women, it is to be believed, have a pleasant way of
mentioning the name of a man with such significance that one of their
party changes colour. When next she meets that man she does it again,
and perhaps he sees it, and perhaps his vanity, always on the alert,
magnifies that unfortunate blush. And they are married, and live
unhappily ever afterwards. And--let us hope there is a hell for gossips.
But men are different in their procedure. They are awkward and gauche.
They talk of newspaper matters, and on the whole there is less harm
done.
The hansom cab containing these two men pulled up jerkily at the door
of No. 9, Cambridge Terrace. Tony Cornish hurried to the door, and
rang the bell as if he knew it well. Major White followed him stiffly.
They were ushered into a library on the ground floor, and were there
received by a young lady, who, pen in hand, sat at a large table littered
with newspaper wrappers.
"I am addressing the Haberdashers' Assistants," she said, "but I am very
glad to see you."
Miss Joan Ferriby was one of those happy persons who never know a
doubt. One must, it seems, be young to enjoy this nineteenth-century
immunity. One must be pretty--it is, at all events, better to be
pretty--and one must dress well. A little knowledge of the world, a
decisive way of stating what pass at the moment for facts, a quick
manner of speaking--and the rest comes tout seul. This cocksureness is
in the atmosphere of the day, just as fainting and curls and an appealing
helplessness were in the atmosphere of an earlier Victorian period.

Miss Ferriby stood, pen in hand, and laughed at the confusion on the
table in front of her. She was eminently practical, and quite without that
self-consciousness which in a bygone day took the irritating form of
coyness. Major White, with whom she shook hands en camarade,
gazed at her solemnly.
"Who are the Haberdashers' Assistants?" he asked.
Miss Ferriby sat down with a grave face. "Oh, it is a splendid charity,"
she answered. "Tony will tell you all about it. It is an association of
which the object is to induce people to give up riding on Saturday
afternoons, and to lend their bicycles to haberdashers' assistants who
cannot afford to buy them for themselves. Papa is patron."
Cornish looked quickly from one to the other. He had always felt that
Major White was not quite of the world in which Joan and be moved.
The major came into it at times, looked around him, and then moved
away again into another world, less energetic, less advanced, less rapid
in its changes. Cornish had never sought to interest his friend in sundry
good works in which Joan, for instance, was interested, and which
formed a delightful topic for conversation at teatime.
"It is so splendid," said Joan, gathering up her papers, "to feel that one
is really doing something."
And she looked up into White's face with an air of grave enthusiasm
which made him drop his eye-glass.
"Oh yes," he answered, rather vaguely.
Cornish had already seated himself at the table, and was folding the
addressed newspaper wrappers over circulars printed on thick
note-paper. This seemed a busy world into which White had stepped.
He looked rather longingly at the newspaper