In the hall, Ariel was on the watch for me.
As I approached her, I happened to be putting on my gloves. She stopped me; and, taking my right arm, lifted my hand toward her face. Was she going to kiss it? or to bite it? Neither. She smelt it like a dog—and dropped it again with a hoarse chuckling laugh.
“You don’t smell of his perfumes,” she said. “You haven’t touched his beard. Now I believe you. Want a cab?”
“Thank you. I’ll walk till I meet a cab.”
She was bent on being polite to me—now I had not touched his beard.
“I say!” she burst out, in her deepest notes.
“Yes?”
“I’m glad I didn’t upset you in the canal. There now!”
She gave me a friendly smack on the shoulder which nearly knocked me down—relapsed, the instant after, into her leaden stolidity of look and manner—-and led the way out by the front door. I heard her hoarse chuckling laugh as she locked the gate behind me. My star was at last in the ascendant! In one and the same day I had found my way into the confidence of Ariel and Ariel’s master.