The colonel and Rex sat after supper under the big beech tree. Ruth, from her window, could see their cigars alight, and, now and then, hear their voices.
Rex was telling the colonel about Braith, of whom he had not ceased thinking since the afternoon. He went to his room early and wrote a long letter to him.
It began: “You did not expect to hear from me until I was cured. Well, you are hearing from me now, are you not?”
And it ended: “Only a few more weeks, and then I shall return to you and Paris, and the dear old life. This is the middle of July. In September I shall come back.”
CHAPTER XIV.
After the colonel’s return, Mr Blumenthal found many difficulties in the way of that social ease which was his ideal. The ladies were never to be met with unaccompanied by the colonel or Gethryn; usually both were in attendance. If he spoke to Mrs Dene, or Ruth, it was always the colonel who answered, and there was a gleam in that trim warrior’s single eyeglass which did not harmonize with the grave politeness of his voice and manner.
Rex had never taken Mr Blumenthal so seriously. He called him “Our Bowery brother,” and “the Gentleman from West Brighton,” and he passed some delightful moments in observing his gruesome familiarity with the maids, his patronage of the grave Jaegers, and his fraternal attitude toward the head of the house. It was great to see him hook a heavy arm in an arm of the tall, military Herr Förster, and to see the latter drop it.
But there came an end to Rex’s patience.
One morning, when they were sitting over their coffee out of doors, Mr Blumenthal walked into their midst. He wore an old flannel shirt, and trousers too tight for him, inadequately held up by a strap. He displayed a tin bait box and a red and green float, and said he had come to inquire of Rex “vere to dig a leetle vorms,” and also to borrow of him “dot feeshpole mitn seelbern ringes.”
The request, and the grossness of his appearance before the ladies, were too much for a gentleman and an angler.