In the intervals of the foolish play Mr. Vetch, who lingered in his place in the orchestra while his mates descended into the little hole under the stage, leaned over the rail and asked his young friend occasional questions, carrying his eyes at the same time about the dingy house at whose smoky ceiling and tarnished galleries he had been staring for so many a year. He came back to Hyacinth’s letters and said: “Of course you know they were clever; they entertained me immensely. But as I read them I thought of poor Pinnie: I wished she could have listened to them; they would have made her so happy.”
“Yes, poor Pinnie,” Hyacinth murmured while his friend went on:
“I was in Paris in 1846; I stayed at a small hotel in the Rue Mogador. I judge from your letters that everything’s changed. Does the Rue Mogador still exist? Yes, everything’s changed. I daresay it’s all much finer, but I liked it very much as it was then. At all events I’m right in supposing—am I not?—that it cheered you up considerably, made you really happy.”
“Why should I have wanted any cheering? I was happy enough,” Hyacinth replied.
The fiddler projected his old, white, conscious face; it had the stale smoothness that betrays a sedentary occupation, thirty years spent in a close crowd, amid the smoke of lamps and the odour of stage-paint. “I thought you were sad about Pinnie.”
“When I jumped with that avidity at your proposing I should take a tour? Poor old Pinnie!” Hyacinth added.
“Well, I hope you think a little better of the world. We mustn’t make up our minds too early in life.”
“Oh I’ve made up mine: the world’s an awfully jolly place.”
“Awfully jolly, no; but I like it as I like an old pair of shoes—I like so much less the idea of putting on the new ones.”
“Why should I complain?” Hyacinth asked. “What have I known but kindness? People have done such a lot for me.”