“Oh, come in with him!” Bessie implored, and at a little yielding in Jeff her brother added:
“Come in, you damn jay!” He pulled at Jeff.
Jeff made haste to shut the door behind them. He was laughing; and if it was from mere brute insensibility to what would have shocked another in the situation, his frank recognition of its grotesqueness was of better effect than any hopeless effort to ignore it would have been. People adjust themselves to their trials; it is the pretence of the witness that there is no trial which hurts, and Bessie was not wounded by Jeff's laugh.
“There's a fire here in the reception-room,” she said. “Can you get him in?”
“I guess so.”
Jeff lifted Alan into the room and stayed him on foot there, while he took off his hat and overcoat, and then he let him sink into the low easy-chair Bessie had just risen from. All the time, Alan was bidding her ring and have some champagne and cold meat set out on the side-board, and she was lightly promising and coaxing. But he drowsed quickly in the warmth, and the last demand for supper died half uttered on his lips.
Jeff asked across him: “Can't I get him up-stairs for you? I can carry him.”
She shook her head and whispered back, “I can leave him here,” and she looked at Jeff with a moment's hesitation. “Did you—do you think that—any one noticed him at Mrs. Enderby's?”