“No thanks, I'm taking prep.” Nevertheless, Clinton lingered a little, talking about nothing in particular; he stood by the mantelpiece, fingering things—a practice that always annoyed Perrin intensely,—then he took up the little china man and looked at him. “Rum chap that,” he said. “Well, chin-chin—” He moved off; he stood for a moment by the door. “Oh, I say!” he said, half turning round, his hand on the handle; “have you heard the news? Traill's engaged to Miss Desart. He's just told me.” He looked at Perrin for a moment, and then went out, banging the door behind him.
Perrin did not move; his hands began to shake; then suddenly his head fell between his shoulders, and his body heaved with sobs. He sat there for a long time, then he began to pace his room; his steps were faster and faster—he was like a wild animal in a cage.
Suddenly he stopped in front of the little china man. His face was white, his eyes were large and staring; with a wild gesture he picked the thing up and flung it to the ground, where it lay at his feet, smashed into atoms....
CHAPTER IX—THE BATTLE OP THE UMBRELLA; WITH THE LADIES
I.
ISABEL told Mrs. Comber on that same afternoon at tea-time; but that good lady, owing to the interruption of the other good ladies and her own Mr. Comber, was unable to say anything really about it until just before going to bed. Mrs. Comber would not have been able to say very much about it in any case quite at first, because her breath was so entirely taken away by surprise, and then afterwards by delight and excitement. For herself this term had, so far, been rather a difficult affair: money had been hard, and Freddie had been even harder—and hard, as she complained, in such strange, tricky comers—never when you would expect him to be and always when you wouldn't. This Mrs. Comber considered terribly unfair, because if one knew what he was going to mind, one would look out for it and be especially careful; but when he let irritating things pass without a word and then “flew out” when there was nothing for anyone to be distressed about, life became a hideous series of nightmares with the enemy behind every hedge.
Mrs. Comber knew that this term had been worse than usual, because she had arrived already, although it was only just past halfterm, at the condition of saying nothing to Freddie when he spoke to her—she called it submission, but she never arrived at it until she was nearly at the limits of her endurance. And now this news of Isabel suddenly made the world bright again; she loved Isabel better than anyone in the world except Freddie and the children; and her love was of the purely unselfish kind, so that joy at Isabel's happiness far outweighed her own discomforts. She was really most tremendously glad, glad with all her size and volubility and color.
Isabel talked to her in her bedroom—it was of course also Freddie's, but he had left no impression on it whatever, whereas she, by a series of touches—the light green wall-paper and the hard black of the shining looking-glass, the silver things, and the china things (not very many, but all made the most of),—had made it her own unmistakably, so that everything shouted Mrs. Comber with a war of welcome. It was indeed, in spite of the light green paper, a noisy impression, and one had always the feeling that things—the china, the silver, and the chairs—jumped when one wasn't in, charged, as it were, with the electricity of Mrs. Comber's temperament and the color of her dresses.