Once or twice little things happened, the slightest things, but it might have seemed to Joan that Oswald was disposed to flirt with Adela. But that was surely impossible....
The first effect of the young woman upon Peter was a considerable but indeterminate excitement. It was neither pleasurable nor unpleasurable, but it hung over the giddy verge of being unpleasant. It made him want to be very large, handsome and impressive. It also made him acutely ashamed of wanting to be very large, handsome and impressive. It turned him from a simple boy into a conflict of motives. He wanted to extort admiration from Adela. Also he wanted to despise her utterly. These impulses worked out to no coherent system of remarks and gestures, and he became awkward and tongue-tied.
Adela wanted to be shown all over the house and garden. She put her arm about Joan in a manner Peter thought offensive. Then she threw back her hair at him over her shoulder and said, shooting a glance at him, “You come too.”
Cheek!
Still, she was a guest, and so a fellow had to follow with his hands in his pockets and watch his own private and particular Joan being ordered about and—what was somehow so much more exasperating—pawed about.
At what seemed to be the earliest opportunity Peter excused himself, and went off to the outhouse in which he had his tools and chemicals and things. He decided he would rig up everything ready to make Sulphuretted Hydrogen—although he knew quite well that this was neither a large, handsome, nor impressive thing to do. And then he would wait for them to come along, and set the odour going.
But neither of the girls came near his Glory Hole, and he was not going to invite them. He just hovered there unvisited, waiting with his preparations and whistling soft melancholy tunes. Finally he made a lot of the gas, simply because he had got the stuff ready, and stank himself out of his Glory Hole into society again.
At supper, which had become a sort of dinner that night, Adela insisted on talking like a rather languid, smart woman of the world to Nobby. Nobby took her quite seriously. It was perfectly sickening.
“D’you hunt much?” said Adela.
“Not in England,” said Nobby. “There’s too many hedges for me. I’ve a sailor’s seat.”