“Lucky to get a little wood,” said Major Widdicombe. “Don’t know what we’ll do when it’s gone. Coal is next to impossible.”
Then the women came down, Polly and Mamise and two or three other house guests, and some wives of important people. They laid off their wraps and then decided to keep them on.
Davidge had been so used to seeing Mamise as a plainly clad, discouraged office-hack that when she descended the stairs and paused on the landing a few steps from the floor, to lift her eyebrows and her lip-corners at him, he was glad of the pause.
“Break it to me gently,” he called across the balustrade.
She descended the rest of the way and advanced, revealed in her complete height and all her radiant vesture. He was dazed by her unimagined splendor.
As she gave him her hand and collected with her eyes the tribute in his, she said:
“Break what to you gently?”
“You!” he groaned. “Good Lord! Talk about ‘the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome’!”
With amiable reciprocity she returned him a compliment on his evening finery.
“The same to you and many of them. You are quite stunning in décolleté. For a pair of common laborers, we are certainly gaudy.”