“Good luck!” he said. “Stay with it, partner. I think Wheeler bets on you; he’ll see you get your chance.”
Kit jumped for the step, the bell clanged, and the train steamed away into the gloom. When a brakesman pulled the door across, Kit sat down and lighted his pipe. Rob had kept his post and that was something, but he had given up his and for four or five months his work would be monotonous and unimportant. He had seen himself triumphant at the bridge; to copy plans at the drawing office was another thing. Although he felt he had taken the proper line, he wondered whether Evelyn would approve. Mrs. Haigh certainly would not.
CHAPTER XXI
JASPER EXPERIMENTS
Dinner was over at Netherhall, and Mrs. Carson’s party had gone to the drawing-room. Mrs. Carson was conservative and she refused to banish the early-Victorian walnut furniture. She claimed Gibbons carved the noble fireplace, but the plate glass carried across above the big grate did not altogether stop the smoke. Tall brass pillars supported oil lamps; the piano and card-table were lighted by candles in old silver sticks.
Although the furniture was ugly, the spacious room had dignity and Mrs. Carson harmonized. Her mouth was thin and her face was pinched. Sometimes her look was mean, she was frankly parsimonious, and her clothes were not good, but her stamp was the stamp of the proud old school.
For Netherhall, the party was large. Jasper had arrived from Liverpool; he had rooms at Sheffield and London, but his habit was to stop for a day or two with his brother. Agatha had arrived from the hospital, and Ledward from town. When he was bored he visited at Netherhall. Ledward was Mrs. Carson’s favorite and he cleverly cultivated her. Mrs. Carson knew her nephew, but she was flattered. Mrs. Haigh and Evelyn were her friends, and as a rule they came across when she had other guests.
“You were at Liverpool?” she said to Jasper.
“I was sending off a man to Montreal. I myself ought to have gone, but when the St. Lawrence freezes one must go by Halifax or New York, and now I get old I begin to hate the shaking cars.”
Smoke whirled about the glass shield, rain beat the windows, and the trees by the river roared like the sea.
“I should hate the steamer,” Mrs. Carson remarked. “So long as another was willing to go for me, I would be content.”