"Hope you'll like it," said the other, with a manner that meant the very opposite.
"I? Oh, I read it ages ago. It was for somebody else. You seem very curious about it?"
"I am. You aren't usually the man to dawdle in bookshops."
"Dawdle?" Orson turned on the other sharply. "What the deuce do you mean? Are you my keeper, or what? If I choose to, I can live in this shop, can't I?"
"Oh, Lord, yes! Looks odd, just the same, you trailing in here after a petticoat, and hanging around for—" he pulled out his watch,—"for a good half hour."
Orson burst out in a sort of clenched breath of rage. He kept the phrases down with difficulty. "Better choose your words," he said. "I don't like your words, and your watch be damned. Since when have my—my friends taken to timing my actions? It's a blessing I'm going abroad."
He turned and walked out of the shop, fiercely, swiftly. As the fresh air struck his face, he put his hand to it, and shook his head, wonderingly. "What's the matter with Moncreith? With me?" He thought of the title of the book he had just given away. "Are we all as mad as that?" he asked himself.
The title was "March Hares."