"I don't think you'd call it music," said Miss Lambert, "if you heard me at the dentist's when he's working that drill thing—ugh! Come."
They left the studio.
The prospect of having Miss Lambert all alone to himself in a cab made the heart of Mr Leavesley palpitate, mixed emotions filled his soul. Blue funk was the basis of these emotions. He was going to propose, so he told himself, immediately, the instant they were in the cab and the horse had started. That was all very well as a statement made to himself: it did not conceal the fact that Miss Lambert was a terribly difficult girl to propose to. One of those jolly girls who treat one as a brother are generally the most difficult to deal with when one approaches them as a lover. But Miss Lambert, besides the fact of her jollity and her treatment of Mr Leavesley as a brother, had a personality all her own. She seemed to him a combination of the practical and the unpractical in about equal proportions, one could never tell how she would take things.
They walked down the King's Road looking for a cab, Miss Lambert and Verneede engaged in vivacious conversation, Leavesley silent, engaged in troubled attempts to think.
I give a few links from the chain of his thoughts just as a specimen.
"Fanny, I love you—no, I can't say that, it's too bald and brutal. Miss Lambert, I have long wanted to—oh, rubbish! How would it do to take her hand—I daren't—bother!—does she care a button about me? Perhaps it would be better to put it off till the next time—I'm not going to funk it—may I call you Fanny?—or Fanny—may I call you Fanny? or Miss Lambert may I call you Fanny? How would it be to write? No, I'll do it."
They stopped, Mr Verneede had hailed a cab, and Leavesley came out of his reverie to find a four-wheeler drawing up at the pavement.
"Hullo," he said to Verneede, "what did you call that thing for?"
"To drive in," replied Fanny, whilst Verneede opened the door. "Get in, I'm in a horrible fright."