"Ah, you are beginning to believe in it too."
"Not a bit. All the effect the Luck has is to make you talk arrant nonsense about it. I believe in it, indeed! I was just humouring you."
"Your notions of the humorous are obscure," observed Harry.
Mr. Francis arrived late that night, full of little anecdotes about his house-hunting, and loud in praises of his flat. He had only come, as he had said, for a couple of days, to collect some books and sticks of furniture, and by the end of the month at the outside he hoped to have it completely habitable. His pleasure in it was that of a child with a new toy, delightful to hear, and they sat up late, listening to his fresh, cheerful talk, and hearkening between whiles to an extraordinary heavy rain which had come on before sunset and was beating at the windows.
This deluge was continuous all night, and next morning they woke to the same streaming heavens; the sky was a lowering arch of deluge, the rain relentless. Harry and Geoffrey, who regarded the sky and the open heavens as the proper roof for man, and houses merely as a shelter for unusual inclemency, had felt not the smallest inclination to stir abroad, but Mr. Francis at lunch announced his intention of walking, rain or no rain.
"It doesn't hurt me," he said; "a brisk walk, whatever the weather. So neither of you will come?"
Harry looked out on to the soupy, splashing gravel.
"Geoff, shall we go for a swim?" he said.
"Thank you, no. I'm too old for mud pies."
Mr. Francis laughed heartily.