The girl freed the last remaining bread-crumb from her gloves. “Why, of course, uncle,” she said, with promptitude.
Although there was no hint of protest in her tone or manner, he felt impelled to soften still further this solitary demonstration of his authority. “You see I've been all round the world, my little girl,” he explained, haltingly, “and when a man's done that, and knocked about everywhere, he's apt to get finicking and notional about trifles every once in a while.”
“You're less so than anybody I ever knew,” she generously interposed.
“Oh, no I'm not. You don't know me well enough yet; that's what's the matter. And you see, Julia—another thing just because you saw that lady throwing out bread, that aint a very good reason why you should do it. You don't know what kind of a person she may be. Girls have got to be so frightfully careful about all that sort of thing.”
Julia offered a constrained little laugh in comment. “Oh, you don't know how careful I can be,” she said.
“But you're not annoyed?” he entreated her—and for answer she came behind him, and rested an arm on his shoulder, and patted it. He stroked her hand with his own. “That's something like the nicest niece in the world!” he exclaimed, with fervour.
When at last she and her brother had gone, he made short work of his breakfast, and drank his coffee at a gulp. A restless activity suddenly informed his movements. He lit a cigar, and began pacing up and down the room, biting his lips in preoccupation as he went. After a little, he opened a window, and ventured cautiously as far out on the balcony as was necessary to obtain a view of the street below. Eventually, he identified his nephew and niece among the pedestrians beneath him, and he kept them in sight till, after more than one tiresome halt at a shop window, they disappeared round a bend in the road. Then he turned and came back into the room with the buoyant air of a man whose affairs are prospering.
He smiled genially to himself as he gathered from the table in one capacious hand all the pieces of bread his beloved niece had broken up, and advanced again to the open window. Waiting here till one of the dingy gulls moving aimlessly about was headed toward him, he tossed out a fragment. The bird dashed at it with a scream, and on the instant the whole squawking flock were on wing. He suffered the hubbub to proceed unappeased for a little while he kept a watchful though furtive eye on that balcony to the left, below. Unhappily he could not get out far enough to see whether the inner curtains of its window were drawn. He threw another bit of bread, and then looked at his watch. It was a few minutes past nine. Surely people travelling to see scenery would be up by this hour.
The strategy of issuing just enough bread to keep the feathered concourse in motion commended itself to his mind. As a precautionary measure, he took all the rolls remaining on the table, and put them in the drawer of a desk by the window. It even occurred to him to ring for more bread, but upon consideration that seemed too daring. The waiter would be sufficiently surprised at the party's appetites as it was.
Half an hour later, his plan of campaign suddenly yielded a victory. Lady Cressage appeared on her balcony, clad in some charming sort of morning gown, and bareheaded. She had nothing in her hands, and seemed indifferent to the birds, but when Thorpe flung forth a handful of fragments into the centre of their whirling flock, she looked up at him. It was the anxious instant, and he ventured upon what he hoped was a decorous compromise between a bow and a look of recognition.