“Oh, Noll,” said Julia in alarm—“I’m sure you ought not to be smoking. You are looking so pale.”
Noll coughed:
“Shush!” said he—“or mother’ll hear you.... I got back the pipe from that sailor fellow—I told him I couldn’t pay him because I had had money losses. He waived the fee—he said that though he commanded a barge he’d colour a dozen meerschaum pipes for a good un like me, free of cost—I had only to send along the pipes and the tobacco. Such a gentlemanly fellow, he was! Though a bit dirty.... Thames sailors are such warm-hearted johnnies—but they don’t keep their nails very nice.”
“But, Noll,” she said—“you ought not to be sitting up in bed without your jacket on.”
She brought the lad his short black jacket, and he submitted to putting it on graciously enough.
“Noll,” she said—“surely you cannot get any pleasure from smoking?”
“My dear Julia,” he said limply—“I shall never get the pipe coloured in time for your wedding if you go on like this.... Unless you put it off for a little.... You see, I’m not very used to a pipe—and I don’t mind telling you it does make my head go round a bit. But—hullo! I say, hold my pipe, Julia—there’s a whopping great moth!”
He handed the pipe to Julia, who took it reluctantly enough; he jumped up, and, seizing a butterfly net which hung over a chest of drawers by his bed-head, he leaped about on his tumbled bed in his night-shirt, Eton jacket, and black stockings, making frantic sweeps at the fluttering moth, which swerved aside, escaped the net, and fluttered through the dark doorway into the next room. Noll leaped from his bed and made after it, in hot pursuit, chasing it into the gloom of the dark room beyond.
Julia sighed—put aside the pipe with dainty fingers of disgust—and sat down again.
They could hear Noll fumbling about in the next room.