We walked up Holborn together. He had eyes for every incident, a tongue that seldom ceased wagging. Many a smart and powdered working girl, tripping to her business, nudged her companion and looked after him. He accepted it all with a bold indifference—the masterful condescension that sets tight-laced breasts a-twittering under their twice-turned jackets. He was much better dressed than I was and carried himself with some show of fashion.
Duke had left when we reached home, and his absence I hardly regretted.
“Well,” said my brother, as we entered the sitting-room, “you’ve decent quarters, Renny, and no doubt deserve them for being a good boy. You can give me some breakfast, I suppose?”
“If you don’t mind eating alone,” I said. “I’ve got no appetite.”
“All the worse for you. I never lose mine.” The table was already laid as Duke had left it. I fetched a knuckle of ham from our private store and placed it before my unwelcome guest, who fell to with a healthy vigor of hunger.
“It’s as well, perhaps, I didn’t find you last night,” he said, munching and enjoying himself. “We should have sat up late and then I might have overslept myself and missed the fun. I say, didn’t he go down plump? I hoped the rope would break and that we should have it over again.”
“Jason!” I cried, “drop it, won’t you? I tell you I got caught there by mistake, and that the whole thing was horrible to me!”
“Oh, all right,” he said, with a laugh. “I shouldn’t have thought you’d have cared, but I won’t say anything more about it.”
I would not challenge word or tone in him. To what could I possibly appeal in one so void of the first instincts of humanity?
He pushed his plate away presently and fetched out a little pipe and began to smoke. I had sat all the time by the window, looking vaguely upon the crowded street.