As his wife entered he was reading: “How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at the approach of nightfall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, after enquiring for the best entertainment the place affords, to take one’s ease at one’s inn! These eventful moments in our lives’ history are too precious, too full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last drop.”
How thoroughly George Trenchard agreed with that. How lucky for him that he was able to defend himself from so much of that same “imperfect sympathy”. Not that he did not love his fellow-creatures, far from it, but it was pleasant to be able to protect oneself from their too constant, their too eager ravages. Had he been born in his beloved Period, then he fancied that he might, like magnificent Sir Walter, have built his Castle and entertained all the world, but in this age of telephones and motorcars one was absolutely compelled.... He turned Hazlitt’s words over on his tongue with a little happy sigh of regret, and then was conscious that his wife was standing by the door.
“Hullo!” he cried, starting up. “Is anything the matter?”
It was so unusual for her to be there that he stared at her large, heavy figure as though she had been a stranger. Then he jumped up, laughing, and the dark blue Hazlitt fell on to the carpet.
“Well, my dear,” he said, “tea-time?”
She came trailing across the room, and stood beside him near the fire.
“No ...” she said, “not yet ... George.... You, look very cosy here,” she suddenly added.
“I am,” he answered. He looked down at the Hazlitt, and her eyes followed his glance. “What have you been doing?”
“I’ve been to the Stores.”
“Why, of course,” he said, chaffing her. “You live there. And what have you been buying this time?”