John's watch had been smashed up for some weeks; but little boys and little girls in the street still flattered him by asking to be told the time.
With one eye searching for a distant clock while your hand pulls out the latch key which depends upon the chain, giving it the weight of a reason to stay in the pocket, you can easily deceive the eyes of these unsuspecting little people in the street. If you discover the distant clock, all well and good. If not, then a hundred devices are left open to you. You can guess--you can tell it by the sun, but, and if you are conscientious, you can apologise and say your watch has stopped. And last of all, if it is a nice little person with eyes in which a laugh is always a-tip-toe, you may dangle the key in front of their face, and with their merriment experience the clean pleasure of honesty.
A quality about John that was interesting, was his ability to anticipate possibilities. Perhaps a man's mind runs instinctively to the future, and it is the woman who lives in the past.
When Mrs. Rowse awakened him in the morning, he sat up in bed with the glowing consciousness that something was to happen that day. Something had been arranged; some appointment was to be kept; some new interest had entered his life which was to take definite shape that very day.
He asked Mrs. Rowse the time--not as one who really wishes to know it, but as it were a duty, which must sooner or later be accomplished. Directly she said a quarter to nine, he remembered. Jill! The Lady of St. Joseph! That morning she was going to tell him how much she liked his story.
He sat up at once in bed.
"Mrs. Rowse! I shall want my coffee in half an hour. Less! Twenty minutes!"
In twenty minutes, he was dressed. Allowance must be made if he chose a sock that matched a tie or spent a moment of thought upon the selection of a shirt to go with them. Vanity, it is, only to do these things for your own approval; but when all consciously, you stand upon the very threshold of romance, it may be excused you if you consider yourself in the reflexion of the door. It is the man who, wandering aimlessly through the streets in life, looks in at every mirror that he passes, who is abominable. That is the vanity of which the prophet spoke. The prophet, himself, would have been the first to set straight the tie, or rearrange the 'kerchief of the lover who goes to meet his mistress.
Even John smiled at himself. The socks matched the tie so absolutely; it was ludicrous how well they matched. There was no rough, blue serge suit that day. Out of the depths of the wardrobe came a coat well brushed and kept. Then he went in to breakfast.
During the meal, Mrs. Rowse lingered about in the sitting-room, dusting things that might easily have escaped notice. John, reading his paper, at last became aware of it with a rush of blood to his cheeks. She had paid the day before for the washing--three and elevenpence.