Margerine moved toward the door; then, by a quaint habit that was a third nature to her (she had two others), she stood there absently, ajar and aloof. Her air of distinction came right out through her wretched frock. Then she went to the drawing-room, singeing her Pagan cheek with the smouldering volume, her young, expansive brain hot with the thought that there were no other copies in the village. "Unless he sends for another from town I shall never be able to keep up my unreasoning, palpitating ecstasy. I must have some ventilation for my inevitableness, or burst."
She rang for fresh tea. The crumpets were crystal-cold. She tasted one, and had a qualm, as if her sympathies were getting enlarged. For a moment she wondered what a headache such as she had read about in books could be like. The next, she was down by the trout-stream, familiar in all she-notes, and lay there gurgling with gutturals.
The peculiarity of Chamois Hyde was that he could not bear making other people—college dons, for instance—ridiculous. About himself it did not so much matter. Oxford had succeeded Eton, and hard on the heels of a good degree had come a cropper in the hunting-field, a nurse, a complicated kiss, a proposal, marriage, disillusionment, in the order named. A poorer, singler man, with the same prancing tip-toe spirit, would have lost all sense of decency, and written a book. But being rich, and, by profession, married, he also was on his way to the usual trout-stream. Which was a thousand pities, and comes into the next chapter.
"ALL'S WELL!"
Cockney Volunteer (on Sentry go). "Halt! Who goes there?"
Rustic. "It's all roight, Man. Oi cooms along 'ere ev'ry Maarnin'!"
