‘So are all of that cult,’ he said. ‘They teach one their entertaining guesswork as though it were an exact science.... And Miss Fairfield—is she too a believer?’
‘Rosemary is rather a baffling girl,’ replied Rosemary’s mother. ‘She spends a lot of time with her aunt, and listens, listens. Yes, that is almost all there is to be said about Rosemary: she listens. At this moment she is no doubt at the Cairo Lodge, hearing about Yoga and Prana and Kamaloka.’
‘And other patent breakfast foods,’ said Redshawe, with a cadence so bitter as to bring wonder into his new friend’s eyes.
‘It would be a pity, don’t you think,’ he answered the question in her glance, ‘if she took all that stuff seriously?’
‘Aren’t you a little positive?’ she quizzed him.... ‘Ah, here is Mr. Bunnard.’
Almost boyishly diffident, the spare familiar figure of Redshawe’s chief sidled towards them. Mr. Bunnard was rather above medium height, but his earnest concentration on the pattern of the carpet made him seem smaller. When he raised his head a pair of ingenuous wondering eyes peered, through the circular lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles, upon a new world.
‘Ah, Redshawe,’ said Mr. Bunnard, focussing his mild radiance upon the young man as they shook hands, ‘you’ve come then. How very nice.’
‘You’re just in time to tell us about the Atlantians, Dick,’ Mrs. Fairfield greeted him, with the air of having been discussing the Atlantians all the afternoon.
‘Very nice,’ repeated Mr. Bunnard, peering from one to the other.
‘Yes, I’ve come, sir,’ said Redshawe, ‘and I’ve brought every one of my seven bodies with me.’