VIII
Lady Shuttleworth then, busiest and most unsuspecting of women, was whisking through her breakfast and her correspondence next morning with her customary celerity and method, when a servant appeared and offered her one of those leaves from Fritzing's note-book which we know did duty as his cards.
Tussie was sitting at the other end of the table very limp and sad after a night of tiresome tossing that was neither wholly sleep nor wholly wakefulness, and sheltered by various dishes with spirit-lamps burning beneath them worked gloomily at a sonnet inspired by the girl he had met the day before while his mother thought he was eating his patent food. The girl, it seemed, could not inspire much, for beyond the fourth line his muse refused to go; and he was beginning to be unable to stop himself from an angry railing at the restrictions the sonnet form forces upon poets who love to be vague, which would immediately have concentrated his mother's attention on himself and resulted in his having to read her what he had written—for she sturdily kept up the fiction of a lively interest in his poetic tricklings—when the servant came in with Fritzing's leaf.
"A gentleman wishes to see you on business, my lady," said the servant.
"Mr. Neumann-Schultz?" read out Lady Shuttleworth in an inquiring voice. "Never heard of him. Where's he from?"
"Baker's Farm, my lady."
At that magic name Tussie's head went up with a jerk.
"Tell him to go to Mr. Dawson," said Lady Shuttleworth.
The servant disappeared.
"Why do you send him away, mother?" asked Tussie.