“Completely wrong!” he said. “They’ve never been more soundly asleep.” Mrs. Viveash laughed too. “Perhaps they all changed their minds, just as they were waking up,” she suggested.
Gumbril Junior reappeared; glasses clinked as he walked, and there was a little rattle of crockery. He was carrying a tray.
“Cold beef,” he said, “and salad and a bit of a cold apple-pie. It might be worse.”
They drew up chairs to Gumbril Senior’s work-table, and there, among the letters and the unpaid bills and the sketchy elevations of archiducal palaces, they ate the beef and the apple-pie, and drank the one-and-ninepenny vin ordinaire of the house. Gumbril Senior, who had already supped, looked on at them from the balcony.
“Did I tell you,” said Gumbril Junior, “that we saw Mr. Porteous’s son the other evening—very drunk?”
Gumbril Senior threw up his hands. “If you knew the calamities that young imbecile has been the cause of!”
“What’s he done?”
“Gambled away I don’t know how much borrowed money. And poor Porteous can’t afford anything—even now.” Mr. Gumbril shook his head and clutched and combed his beard. “It’s a fearful blow, but of course, Porteous is very steadfast and serene and.... There!” Gumbril Senior interrupted himself, holding up his hand. “Listen!”
In the fourteen plane trees the starlings had suddenly woken up.
There was a wild outburst, like a stormy sitting in the Italian Parliament. Then all was silent. Gumbril Senior listened, enchanted. His face, as he turned back towards the light, revealed itself all smiles. His hair seemed to have blown loose of its own accord, from within, so to speak; he pushed it into place.