Now that Nanty should, after a lapse of nearly thirty years, meet her old friend Professor Leighrail armed with a drain-bamboo would appear to be a situation very far removed from romance. But to me it seemed a most delightful and natural proceeding, for Nanty would no doubt remember that her one time lover was, to say the least of it, a little eccentric in his habits. And Professor Leighrail would equally remember that Nanty with her broad outlook on life was not easily shocked. Did I say "broad outlook"? I withdraw it, for Nanty with her hard and narrow views of the genus man is anything but broad in one respect. Even her more intimate knowledge of Dimbie has not converted her, and Peter pronounces her as "pig-headed."
Anyway, her meeting with the Professor left her quite calm and unruffled, while he, poor man, because he was a man, mopped his brow and dropped the bamboo on to the grass as though it had been a live snake.
I had omitted to tell Dimbie of their former relationship, and he now stood and stared at them in the same way that Amelia stares at me when I am gone, as she terms it, "a bit dotty."
Nanty dropped gracefully into a wicker basket-chair, and settled her mauve taffeta gown comfortably and elegantly. The Professor with his big shoes and linen coat cut a poor figure beside her.
"Nanty and Professor Leighrail used to know one another," I explained to Dimbie.
"It was a very long time ago, when we were young. I won't say how long, because the Professor might not like it," said Nanty calmly.
Here was an opening for the Professor to say something gallant, "That she was not altered in the least, that only he had grown old," but he did not take it. The Professor is not a party man. He stared at the bamboo and said nothing. Was he thinking of the days when Nanty stood to him for everything adorable in woman, or was he thinking of his lost Amabella? Can the woman you have married entirely efface your memory of the other woman you wished to marry? And Nanty. She had started and seemed distressed when I told her of the Professor's loneliness, of his unkempt appearance. She was downright cross when I mentioned his ballooning, she had said it was a dangerous game. She had also said she had been a fool not to marry him, and she supposed that he had grown very fond of Amabella. Now she sat sphinx-like, with a little smile on her lips and her hands folded on her lap. The Professor might have been a casual acquaintance she had met the day before. I longed for strength to get up and shake her.
Dimbie recognised that the Professor was in trouble. His embarrassment and awkwardness, not to mention silence, were only too evident. Manlike he came to the help of man. He plied him with questions about the drains. He did not understand why the Professor should be awkward and embarrassed, though vaguely he felt it had something to do with the presence of Nanty; but whatever the cause, he knew that the Professor required gentle assistance, and to give this assistance he must get him on one of his own pet subjects, either drains, over-eating, or balloons. He selected drains. He picked up the bamboo to attract the Professor's attention, and asked him how long he gave us.
"Give you?" said the Professor, looking a little dazed.
"Before we are down with typhoid." Dimbie was quite grave.