'It is a question, Jerry, "how far high failure overleaps the bound of low successes." Ask Miss Drummond; I don't know.'
The answering woman's voice came swiftly. 'Surely this is no place for an Englishman to talk of failure!'
He turned sharply. So this girl was at it now; she too wanted to rouse him; she had heard the story--or part of it.
'I almost wish it were,' he answered bitterly; 'then we might forget it. But the glory of it gets to our heads--we come back to it again and again.'
He stopped abruptly, for a tenor voice rose in sweet undertones upon that twittering of birds--
'There is a green hill far away,
Outside a city wall.'
The singing and the faint crush of gravel ceased together, as the singer, passing them, drew up and touched the old billycock hat.
'Beg parding, sir,' said John Ellison, loafer, 'but p'r'aps you'd care to 'ear there was a man dead o' plague taken out o' the train I come in this mornin'.'
'Thanks,' replied Jack Raymond. 'I know there have been several isolated cases.'