CHAPTER XV
JOHN PLAYS THE SAMARITAN
There is no question but that Mrs. Trimwell could rise to an emergency when it presented itself before her. In fifteen, perhaps no more than ten, minutes from their entry, she had the drenched couple into dry garments; the injured ankle was bound in soft bandages, tea was in preparation.
But why, marvelled John, should her beneficent services have been dispensed with a face as sour as a crab-apple? Why should her whole mien have been as stiff, unbending, and unyielding as the proverbial poker? The disapproval of her attitude was so marked as to be impossible to ignore. John, in the position of host, felt some sort of an apology necessary. Mrs. Trimwell departed, he stumbled one forth, wondering, as he endeavoured at lightness, whether he were not, after all, a bit of a fool for his pains; whether, by remarking on her taciturn grimness, he were not emphasizing it more crudely.
“She doesn’t mean to be abrupt,” he concluded, holding his cigarette case towards the stranger.
The man took a cigarette, and glanced at John.
“Oh, yes, I guess she does,” he remarked drily.
John looked at him. Obtuseness still had him in her clutch.
“She knows who I am,” said the man coolly, “and—well, I fancy most folk round here are not predisposed in my favour. My name, by the way, is David Delancey.”
John gasped, frankly gasped. He was amazed, dumbfounded. Running through the amazement was, I fancy, something like annoyance; though superseding it was a sense of the ludicrous, a realization of the absurdity of the situation. And this brought him to something perilously near a titter.
The man looked at him.