“Look here,” he said, “I want to talk to you. Can’t you ask me to tea?”
The place seemed to spin round, and the mahogany counter to heave and fall like a wave, as she tried to speak but could not for a few moments. Then she mastered her emotion, and in a hurried, trembling, half-hysterical voice, she chirped out:
“Yes; this evening, Mr Thickens, at six.”
Volume Two—Chapter Three.
James Thickens Takes Tea.
“Rum little woman,” said Thickens to himself as he hurried out of the bank. “Wonder whether she’d like another couple of fish.”
Some men would have gone home to smarten up before visiting a lady to take tea, but James Thickens was not of that sort. His idea of smartness was always to look like a clean, dry, drab leaf, and he was invariably, whenever seen, at that point of perfection.
Punctually at six o’clock he rapped boldly at Miss Heathery’s door, turning round to stare hard at Gemp, who came out eagerly to look and learn, before going in to have a fit—of temper, and then moving round to stare at Mrs Pinet’s putty nose, rather a large one when flattened against the pane, as she strained to get a glimpse of such an unusual proceeding.