The keeper he was watching us,
For him we did n't care!
Shelton suddenly felt certain that Antonia's father was just as anxious to say something expressive of his feelings, and as unable as himself. And this was comforting.
“You know, sir—” he began.
But Mr. Dennant's eyebrows rose, his crow's-feet twinkled; his personality seemed to shrink together.
“By Jove!” he said, “it's stopped! Now's our chance! Come along, my dear fellow; delays are dangerous!” and with his bantering courtesy he held the door for Shelton to pass out. “I think we'll part here,” he said—“I almost think so. Good luck to you!”
He held out his dry, yellow hand. Shelton seized it, wrung it hard, and muttered the word:
“Grateful!”
Again Mr. Dennant's eyebrows quivered as if they had been tweaked; he had been found out, and he disliked it. The colour in his face had died away; it was calm, wrinkled, dead-looking under the flattened, narrow brim of his black hat; his grey moustache drooped thinly; the crow's-feet hardened round his eyes; his nostrils were distended by the queerest smile.
“Gratitude!” he said; “almost a vice, is n't it? Good-night!”
Shelton's face quivered; he raised his hat, and, turning as abruptly as his senior, proceeded on his way. He had been playing in a comedy that could only have been played in England. He could afford to smile now at his past discomfort, having no longer the sense of duty unfulfilled. Everything had been said that was right and proper to be said, in the way that we such things should say. No violence had been done; he could afford to smile—smile at himself, at Mr. Dennant, at to-morrow; smile at the sweet aroma of the earth, the shy, unwilling sweetness that only rain brings forth.