'Oh, but he often reads that,' said Addie. 'When we wake him up and tell him to go to bed, he says indignantly he wasn't sleeping, but thinking, turns over a page and falls asleep again.'
They all laughed.
'Oh, he's a famous sleeper,' Addie continued. 'It's as difficult to get him out of bed as into it. He says himself he's an awful lounger, and used to idle away whole days before he invented time-tables. Now he has every hour cut and dried—he says his salvation lies in regular hours.'
'Addie, Addie, don't tell tales out of school!' said Sidney.
'Why, what tales?' asked Addie, astonished. 'Isn't it rather to his credit that he has conquered his bad habits?'
'Undoubtedly; but it dissipates the poetry in which I am sure Miss Ansell was enshrouding him. It shears a man of his heroic proportions to hear he has to be dragged out of bed. These things should be kept in the family.'
Esther stared hard at the house. Her cheeks glowed as if the limelight man had turned his red rays on them. Sidney chuckled mentally over his insight. Addie smiled.
'Oh, nonsense! I'm sure Esther doesn't think less of him because he keeps a time-table.'
'You forget your friend has what you haven't—artistic instinct. It's ugly. A man should be a man, not a railway system. If I were you, Addie, I'd capture that time-table, erase "lecturing," and substitute "cricketing." Raphael would never know, and every afternoon, say at 2 P.M., he'd consult his time-table, and, seeing he had to cricket, he'd take up his stumps and walk to Regent's Park.'
'Yes, but he can't play cricket!' said Esther, laughing, and glad of the opportunity.