From the first Christina Alberta did not like this young gentleman from Cambridge. He was like a younger, cruder Teddy Winterton, with impudent bad manners instead of impudent good manners, and with neither bodily grace nor good looks. And while he spoke to Mr. Preemby he glanced at her. But she had no inkling of the part he might play in the life of her Daddy and herself.
When she and her Daddy went into the lounge for coffee and her cigarette, the young man came and placed himself at an adjacent table and initiated some more conversation. Was Tunbridge Wells an amusing place? Was there any chance of his getting any golf or tennis?
“There are a number of delightful walks,” said Mr. Preemby.
“Not much fun alone,” said the young man.
“There are the pleasures of observation,” said Mr. Preemby.
“All this country has been pretty well worked over,” said the young man of science. “Is there a Museum here?”
Mr. Preemby did not know.
“There ought to be a Museum in every town.”
Presently the coffee and the cigarettes were finished. This evening Mr. Preemby was for the drawing-room. Major Bone had gone, the smoking-room had no attractions, and Mr. Preemby had exchanged a few amiable words with the gentleman with whiskers and hoped to follow them up. Christina Alberta went with him. At the sight of the old Tatlers and Sketches she remembered she had bought a book in the High Street that day, a second-hand copy of Rousseau’s Confessions. She went off to get it. She found the young gentleman from Cambridge still sitting in the lounge smoking cigarettes.
“Pretty gloomy here,” he said.