Psmith restored the clipping to his waistcoat pocket.
“You wound me, Comrade Jackson,” he said. “I had expected a broader outlook from you. In fact, I rather supposed that you would have rushed round instantly to the offices of the journal and shoved in a similar advertisement yourself. But nothing that you can say can damp my buoyant spirit. The cry goes round Kensington (and district) ‘Psmith is off!’ In what direction the cry omits to state: but that information the future will supply. And now, Comrade Jackson, let us trickle into yonder tea-shop and drink success to the venture in a cup of the steaming. I had a particularly hard morning to-day among the whitebait, and I need refreshment.”
§ 2
After Psmith had withdrawn his spectacular person from it, there was an interval of perhaps twenty minutes before anything else occurred to brighten the drabness of Wallingford Street. The lethargy of afternoon held the thoroughfare in its grip. Occasionally a tradesman’s cart would rattle round the corner, and from time to time cats appeared, stalking purposefully among the evergreens. But at ten minutes to five a girl ran up the steps of Number Eighteen and rang the bell.
She was a girl of medium height, very straight and slim; and her fair hair, her cheerful smile, and the boyish suppleness of her body all contributed to a general effect of valiant gaiety, a sort of golden sunniness—accentuated by the fact that, like all girls who looked to Paris for inspiration in their dress that season, she was wearing black.
The small maid appeared again.
“Is Mrs. Jackson at home?” said the girl. “I think she’s expecting me. Miss Halliday.”
“Yes, miss?”
A door at the end of the narrow hall had opened.
“Is that you, Eve?”