Then I went over and stood above Mr. Poopendyke.
"Mr. Poopendyke," said I slowly, darkly, "what do you know about those violets?"
He quailed. "I hope you don't mind, Mr. Smart. It's all right. I put one of your cards in, so that there couldn't be any mistake."
CHAPTER XIII — I VISIT AND AM VISITED
Halfway up the winding stairways, I paused in some astonishment. It had just occurred to me that I was going up the steps two at a time and that my heart was beating like mad.
I reflected. Here was I racing along like a schoolboy, and wherefor? What occasion was there for such unseemly haste? In the first place, it was now but a few minutes after eleven, and she had asked me for luncheon; there was no getting around that. At best luncheon was two hours off. So why was I galloping like this? The series of self-inflicted questions found me utterly unprepared; I couldn't answer one of them. My brain somehow couldn't get at them intelligently; I was befuddled. I progressed more slowly, more deliberately, finally coming to a full stop in a sitting posture in one of the window casements, where I lighted a cigarette and proceeded to thresh the thing out in my mind before going any farther.
The fundamental problem was this: why was I breaking my neck to get to her before Blatchford had time to deliver my response to her appealing little note? It was something of a facer, and it set me to wondering. Why was I so eager? Could it be possible that there was anything in the speculation of my servants? I recalled the sensation of supreme delight that shot through me when I received her note, but after that a queer sort of oblivion seems to have surrounded me, from which I was but now emerging in a timely struggle for self-control. There was something really startling about it, after all.
I profess to be a steady, level-headed, prosaic sort of person, and this surprising reversion to extreme youthfulness rather staggered me. In fact it brought a cold chill of suspicion into existence. Grown-up men do not, as a rule, fly off the head unless confronted by some prodigious emotion, such as terror, grief or guilt. And yet here was I going into a perfect rampage of rapture over a simple, unconventional communication from a lady whom I had known for less than a month and for whom I had no real feeling of sympathy whatever. The chill of suspicion continued to increase.