Mrs. Fane made a little moue of surprise.
“I say, mother, don’t keep on calling attention to everything I do. You know I’ve smoked for ages.”
“Yes, but not so very publicly, dear boy.”
“Well, you don’t mind, do you? I must begin some time,” said Michael.
“Michael, don’t be cross with me. You’re so deliciously amusing, and so much too nice for those absurd women,” Mrs. Fane laughed.
Just then the Miss McDonnells appeared on the staircase, and Michael frowned at his mother not to say any more about them.
It was a fairly successful evening. The elder Miss McDonnell bored Michael rather with a long account of why her father had left Ireland, and what a blow it had been to him to open a large hotel in Burton-on-Trent. He was also somewhat fatigued by the catalogue of Mr. McDonnell’s virtues, of his wit and courage and good looks and shrewdness.
“He has a really old-fashioned sense of humour,” said Miss McDonnell. “But then, of course, he’s Irish. He’s accounted quite the cleverest man in Burton, but then, being Irish, that’s not to be wondered at.”
Michael wished she would not say ‘wondered’ as if it were ‘wandered,’ and indeed he was beginning to think that Miss McDonnell was a great trial, when he suddenly discovered that by letting his arm hang very loosely from his shoulder it was possible without the slightest hint of intention occasionally to touch Kathleen’s hand as they walked along. The careful calculation that this proceeding demanded occupied his mind so fully that he was able to give mechanical assents to Miss McDonnell’s praise of her father, and apparently at the same time impress her with his own intelligence.
As the evening progressed Michael slightly increased the number of times he tapped Kathleen’s hand with his, and after about an hour’s promenade of the pier he was doing a steady three taps a minute. He now began to speculate whether Kathleen was aware of these taps, and from time to time he would glance round at her over his shoulder, hopeful of catching her eyes.