CHAPTER XX
AN ENCOUNTER ON THE BEACH
“Doing anything this afternoon, Tucker?”
George Tubb paused with a foot on the stairs to the third floor of Whitson and put the question with elaborate carelessness. Toby hesitated the fraction of a moment. He knew whither the inquiry led and he wanted to answer in the affirmative, but he really wasn’t doing anything special, and Arnold could never be counted on for Sunday afternoon entertainment, and so he said, after a scarcely noticeable pause: “Why, no, I guess not, Tubb.”
“Wondered if you’d care to take a walk somewhere,” continued the other, hurriedly. “It’s a corking day and—and everything.”
“All right. About three? I’ve got a letter to finish.”
“Any time.” Tubb’s tone held perfect indifference. Toby felt as if he had made the proposal himself and as if Tubb were doing him a favor! For an instant he was riled and had something tart on the end of his tongue. But he kept it there, and only said: “Three then. So long!”
Tubb’s feet pounded on up the stairs and Toby pushed open the door of Number 12. Inside, his slight frown vanished and he chuckled. “Silly chump!” he murmured. “Afraid I’d guess how much he wanted me to go with him. Gee, I wonder why! I’m never more than fairly decent to him. Must be my—my fatal beauty that attracts him!” And Toby’s chuckle grew into a laugh as he caught sight of his smiling but unclassic features in the mirror over Arnold’s dresser.
The trouble with writing letters after a Sunday dinner is that a Sunday dinner is likely to be a rather hearty affair, affecting not only the body with torpidity but the brain as well. So it was that while the first three pages of Toby’s weekly epistle were brilliant enough the last page fell off badly in interest. In fact, he only reached the bottom of it by desperate effort and by shortening the lines. Then, when he had thumped a stamp on the corner of the envelope and found cap and sweater, he clattered down and dropped the letter in the mail-box in front of Oxford. After that he backed away to the edge of the Prospect, as the grassy terrace in front of the buildings was called, fixed his gaze on the window of Number 31 and hailed.