"We're not fools," admitted Mr. Rosenbaum.
"One night, when I was asleep on the couch in that back room of yours in Cromwell Road--before you failed last time"--it is within the range of possibility that this allusion was meant to sting, but Mr. Rosenbaum smoked blandly on--"that girl of yours cut off some of my hair, and drew blood in doing it, by George!"
"Ah! she says you give it her--from sympathy, my friend. She admire you very much, that girl."
Mr. Ely kept silence. If there was any one of the six he disliked more than the others it was the young lady whom her father said admired him very much--Miss Rachel Rosenbaum. Some fathers, if they had had the names of three of their daughters received in this rather frigid way, would have changed the subject perhaps. But if Mr. Rosenbaum had not been a persevering man, his address would not have been Queen's Gate. Besides, Mrs. Rosenbaum was dead, and he had to act the parts of mother and father too. And there were six.
"Judith, she miss you too."
This was the fourth; there still were two to follow. Mr. Ely resolved to have a little plunge upon his own account.
"Doing anything in Unified?"
Mr. Rosenbaum looked at him, puffed out a cloud of smoke, and smiled. "I say, Judith, she miss you too."
"And I said, 'Doing anything in Unified?'"
Mr. Rosenbaum leaned forward and laid his great, fat, jewelled hand on Mr. Ely's knee. "Now, my friend, there is a girl for you; plump, tender--what an eye!"