"I'm awfully sorry. Can I help you to pick it up?"
"Go away," said Miss Hancock, who was on her knees collecting the fragments of glass; "I want to see nothing more of you. If you are lost to respectability you might retain at least common decency."
"Decency!"
"Yes, decency."
"I don't know that I've said anything indecent, or that there is anything indecent in going for a day on the river with a girl. Well, I'm going——" A luminous idea suddenly struck him. He knew the old maid's mind, and the terror she had of the bare idea of her brother marrying; he remembered the spruce appearance of his uncle that morning and the lavender satin necktie. "I say——"
"Well?"
"Talking of girls, how about uncle and his girl?"
"What's that you say!"
"Nothing, nothing; I oughtn't to have said anything about it. Well, I'm off."
He left the room hurriedly and shut the door, before she could call him back he was out of the house.