"Well, Hughie?"
"I think," said Hughie, answering the unspoken question, "that she wants—slapping!"
Mildred Leroy nodded her head sagely.
"Ah!" she remarked. "I thought you would say that. Well, I hope you'll do it."
Hughie reviewed the events of the day, more suo, at three o'clock next morning, sitting with his feet on the sill of his open bedroom window,—the bedroom of his boyhood, with the old school and 'Varsity groups upon the walls,—as he smoked a final pipe before retiring to rest.
It was almost dawn. The velvety darkness was growing lighter in texture; and occasionally an early-rising and energetic young bird would utter a tentative chirrup—only to subside, on meeting with no encouragement from the other members of the orchestra (probably trades unionists), until a more seasonable hour.
Hughie had sat on with D'Arcy and Leroy in the billiard-room long after the other men—Joey's clientèle—had emptied their glasses and gone to bed. There had been a "ladies' night," accompanied by fearsome games (of a character detrimental to the table) between sides captained by Joey and another damsel; and even after Mildred Leroy had swept her charges upstairs there had been bear-fighting and much shrieking in the passages and up the staircase. Then the younger gentlemen had returned, rumpled but victorious, to quench their thirst and listen with respectful deference to any tale that the great Marrable might care to unfold. (The story of the Orinoco had gone round, though it had mercifully escaped the notice of the halfpenny papers.)
But Hughie had not been communicative, though he had proved an eager and appreciative listener to 'Varsity gossip and athletic "shop." So the young men, having talked themselves to a standstill, had gradually faded away, highly gratified to find the great man not only willing but eager to listen to their meticulous chronicles; and Hughie and D'Arcy and Leroy, their symposium reduced to companionable limits, had compared notes and "swapped lies," as the Americans say, far into the night.
Hughie's impressions of the day were slightly blurred and confused—at the which let no man wonder. He was accustomed to fresh faces and new environments, but the plunge from yesterday into to-day had been a trifle sudden. Last night he had driven up to the door of Manors a masterless man, a superior vagabond, an irresponsible free-lance, with hundreds of acquaintances and never a friend. In twenty-four hours this sense of irresponsible detachment had gone for ever, and the spell of English home-life had sunk deep into his being. He felt for the first time that he was more than a mere unit in the Universe. He had turned from something into somebody. He realised that he had a stake in the country—the county—the little estate of Manors itself; and a great desire was upon him to settle down and surround himself with everything that is conveyed to an Englishman here and abroad—especially abroad—by the word Home.