Henry felt a shock as if he had plunged unexpectedly, headlong, into ice-water; then a glow.
He was a daring soul. They didn't understand him in Sunbury. He had temperament, a Bohemian nature. The thing was, he'd wasted two years trying to make another sort of himself. Kept account of every penny in a red book! All that! Book was in his pocket now.
He decided to tear it up. He wouldn't be a coward another day. That plodding self-discipline hadn't got him anywhere. Now really, had it?
Little inner voices were protesting weakly. People might find out about it. Have to be pretty quiet. And keep the shades down. It wouldn't do for the folks in the parsonage, across the alley, to know that Mrs Arthur V. Henderson and her guest were in the Parmenter barn. Have to find some tactful way of suggesting that they come after dark...
As if she could read his thoughts, Mrs Henderson remarked calmly: 'You come for us, Henry. Say about eight.'
Still the little voices of doubt and confusion. Even of fear. He mentally shouted them down; fixing his eyes on the disturbingly radiant Corinne, then glancing for moral support at the really pretty little Mrs Henderson who gave out such a reassuring air of knowing precisely what she was about, of being altogether in the right. Funny, knowing her all these years, he hadn't realised she was so nice!
He had turned defeat into victory. Single-handed. Will and Fred could go sit on the Wells Street bridge and eat bananas. He had settled their hash.
5
To this lofty mood there came, promptly? an opposite and fully equal reaction.
Difficulties having arisen in connection with the problem of breaking the news to Humphrey, he couldn't very well go back to the rooms.