Guy heard the clink of a tray deposited cautiously on the floor of the passage outside. He allowed Miss Peasey time to retreat before he opened the door, because it was one of the clauses in her charter that she was never, as a lady housekeeper, to be asked to bring a tray into a room when any one but Guy was present. He hoped that after they had drunk his visitors would depart; but, alas! the unintended charm of his conversation seemed likely to prolong their stay.
"Rabelais," Brydone read slowly, as he saw the volumes on the shelves. "That's a bit thick, isn't it?"
"In quantity or quality, do you mean?" asked Guy.
"I've heard that's the thickest book ever written," said Brydone.
"Do you read old French easily?" asked Guy.
"Oh, it's in old French, is it?" said Brydone, in a disappointed voice. "That would biff me."
A silence fell upon the room, a silence that seemed to symbolize the "biffing" of the doctor's son by old French. Willsher took the opportunity to steer the conversation back to fish, and ten o'clock struck in the middle of an argument between him and his friend over the merits of two artificial flies. Guy must be on the Rectory lawn by eleven o'clock, and he began to be anxious, so animated was the discussion, about the departure of these well-meaning intruders. He did not want to plunge straight from their company into the glorious darkness that would hold Pauline; and he eyed the volume of Keats lying face downward on the table, hoping he would be allowed to come back to the knights and ladies praying in their dumb oratories, while he thought with a thrill of the moment when he should be able to read:
And they are gone; ay, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.
"If you can't get a chub any other way, you can sometimes get him with a bit of bacon," Willsher was saying. "And I know a fellow who caught one of those whoppers under Marston's Mill with a cherry. Fact, I assure you."
"I know a man at Oldbridge who caught a four-pounder with a bumblebee."