They were both upon the piazza; Blake smoking a well-colored meerschaum and seemingly half asleep, and the Dimber, with his well-polished boot heels elevated to the piazza railing, reading from a brown volume, with a countenance expressive of absorbed interest.
I seated myself where I could observe both without seeming to do so, and tilting my hat over my nose, dropped into a lounging attitude. I suppose that I looked the personification of careless indolence. I know that I felt perplexed, annoyed, uncomfortable.
Perplexed, because of the many mysteries that surrounded me. Annoyed, because while I longed to be actively at work upon the solution of these mysteries, I could only sit like a sleepy idiot, and furtively watch two rascals engaged in killing time, the one with a pipe, the other with a French novel. Uncomfortable, because the day was sultry, and the piazza chairs were hard, and constructed with little regard for the ease of the forms that would occupy them.
But there comes an end to all things, or so it is said. At last there came an end to my loitering on the warm piazza.
At the proper time Carnes came lumbering down-stairs seeming not yet sobered, but fully equipped for his journey. He took an affectionate leave of the landlord, receiving some excellent advice in return. And, after favoring me with a farewell speech, half maudlin, half impertinent, wholly absurd, and intended for the benefit of the lookers-on, who certainly enjoyed the scene, he departed noisily, and, as Barney Cooley, was seen no more in Trafton.
A few moments later, "the gentleman in gray" also took his leave, bestowing a polite nod upon one or two of the more social ones, but without so much as glancing toward Dimber Joe or myself. He walked sedately away, followed by the hotel factotum, who carried his natty traveling bag.
Still Dimber read on at his seemingly endless novel, and still I lounged about the porch, sometimes smoking, sometimes feigning sleep.
At last came supper time. I hailed it as a pleasant respite, and followed Dimber Joe to the dining room with considerable alacrity.