Her glance showed nothing but tender solicitude, but inwardly Miss Peavey was telling herself that that would hold him for awhile.
“True,” said Psmith, “true. But you know what Art is. An inexorable mistress. The inspiration came, and I felt that I must take the risk. But it has left me weak, weak.”
“You BIG STIFF!” said Miss Peavey. But not aloud.
They walked on a few steps.
“In fact,” said Psmith, with another inspiration, “I’m not sure I ought not to be going back and resting now.”
Miss Peavey eyed a clump of bushes some dozen yards farther down the drive. They were quivering slightly, as though they sheltered some alien body; and Miss Peavey, whose temper was apt to be impatient, registered a resolve to tell Edward Cootes that, if he couldn’t hide behind a bush without dancing about like a cat on hot bricks, he had better give up his profession and take to selling jellied eels. In which, it may be mentioned, she wronged her old friend. He had been as still as a statue until a moment before, when a large and excitable beetle had fallen down the space between his collar and his neck, an experience which might well have tried the subtlest woodsman.
“Oh, please don’t go in yet,” said Miss Peavey. “It is such a lovely evening. Hark to the music of the breeze in the tree-tops. So soothing. Like a far-away harp. I wonder if it is whispering secrets to the birds.”
Psmith forbore to follow her into this region of speculation, and they walked past the bushes in silence.
Some little distance farther on, however, Miss Peavey seemed to relent.
“You are looking tired, Mr. McTodd,” she said anxiously. “I am afraid you really have been overtaxing your strength. Perhaps after all you had better go back and lie down.”