“Thanks.”
“Cab, sir? There’s Timmins’s fly.”
“Yes, that will do.”
Murchison turned abruptly from the porter to find Miss Carmagee and Catherine kissing, and Jack tugging at his godfather’s hands. It was Porteus in a new Panama hat, whose whiteness made his face look brown as an Asiatic’s.
“Ah, my dear Murchison, ten minutes late; beast of a line this.”
“It was good of you to come.”
“Eh, what?—not a bit of it. Where’s your luggage? I abhor stations; can’t talk in comfort. This imp of darkness can come along with us.”
An unprejudiced observer would have imagined the little man in the most peppery of tempers. He tweaked Jack by the ear, frowned hard at Catherine, and bit his mustache as though possessed by some uncontrollable spirit of impatience.
His sister was straightening her bonnet-strings.
“You can drive straight home, dear; everything is ready.”