“I wish I had, miss,” he said. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, really—but one can’t help wondering....”
How often he had wondered in his lonely wanderings through that dear city of day-dreams where all the people one knows look out of windows as one passes and the roads are paved with pride! How often had he decided and changed and decided again!
§ 9
Now suddenly a realization of intrusion shattered this conversation. A third person stood over the little encampment, smiling mysteriously and waving a cleek in a slow hieratic manner through the air.
“De licious lill’ corn’,” said the newcomer in tones of benediction.
He met their enquiring eyes with a luxurious smile, “Licious,” he said, and remained swaying insecurely and failing to express some imperfectly apprehended deep meaning by short peculiar movements of the cleek.
He was obviously a golfer astray from some adjacent course—and he had lunched.
“Mighty Join you,” he said, and then very distinctly in a full large voice, “Miss Malleleine Philps.” There are the penalties of a public and popular life.
“He’s drunk,” the lady whispered. “Get him to go away, Dick. I can’t endure drunken men.”
She stood up and Bealby stood up. He advanced in front of her, slowly with his nose in the air, extraordinarily like a small terrier smelling at a strange dog.