'I am very sorry,' said Petrovitch, 'but I am sure poor Mrs Litvinoff could not be in better hands than those of your good, kind wife.'
It was noticeable that he never spoke of Alice save as Mrs Litvinoff.
'You've a snug little place up here, sir,' said Toomey, looking round him. 'And do you really like reading—those sort of books, I mean,' pointing to Hegel's 'Logic,' which lay open on the table.
'I like doing better than reading, but one must read much to be able to do little in the line of work I am on at present.'
'Your line of work,' said Toomey, glancing admiringly at his host, 'is a thing as I never can get to understand. How it's done, I mean. Now, paving is straightforward. When you've got a paving-stone you know what it is you've got, and how far it'll go, but words is such shifty things, and how you manage to make 'em fit into each other so as to make 'em mean what you mean is what gets over me.'
'Perhaps I don't always make them mean what I mean. Judging by the way people misunderstand what I say—ah! here is Hirsch,' as the door opened, 'and Pewtress too. How are you? Now we're all here but Mr Vernon.'
'He's coming upstairs now,' said Pewtress, the stone-mason with the intellectual forehead, who had been at Mrs Quaid's at the last meeting of the Cleon.
Mr Hirsch seemed to be in more genial mood than he had been in any of those brief conversations which we hitherto had occasion to report. He had shaved himself—he even appeared to have combed his hair—and he shook hands with Toomey quite warmly and cordially.
The host had gone half-way down the stairs to meet his fourth guest—a lame boy, whose crutches made it not easy for him to mount to the height of Petrovitch's nest. He now returned with him on his arm—and after a general introduction of him to the others they all sat down to tea.