“Fancy,” I commented haphazard to the rhapsodist before me. “Well; I do hope everything will be all right.” And I took up the magazine my employer had tossed on to my lap—there was a picture on the cover of a pretty Summer-girl looking over the sea—and prepared to hold it up in front of me for the rest of the journey.
Sydney—surprised and sulky—read his English Review. Presently I refused his not too pressing invitation to join him in the dining-car, and he left me for an hour and a half.
For love, that robs us women of the appetite for anything but Romance, seems to make men even hungrier for their food.
* * * * *
“Eus-tern!” came the familiar Cockney bawl again at last. “Eus-tern!”
It was a change, after what I’d been used to for the last few weeks, to have to fend for myself in the matter of luggage and a taxi. One doesn’t specially look to men in love for decent manners. Still—that other one knew how to pay these attentions in spite of his Odette and her gloves! Sydney’s evidently the type that pays homage to the Well-Beloved by being casual towards every other woman. He seemed to efface himself until his lukewarm offer of getting me a cab could be answered from the cab-window.
“Ah—may I tell him to drive to Marconi Mansions, Miss Trant?”
“I’ve told him, thanks. How fearfully hot it is here, and how stuffy”—I sniffed with distaste—“after the country!”
“Yes, isn’t it?—one’s almost consoled for Her being away, in that lovely, soft, pure air of Ballycool! Good night!”