Kent did as he was bidden. The stimulant, which he needed, revived him. Wither guessed that something untoward had occurred. He had a woman's intuition, this bright-eyed, cynical little being, and he rattled on in his light way to save Kent the strain of making conversation.
“Have a cigarette?” he asked, taking out his case. “No? Well, smoke your pipe. I can't understand how anyone but a horny-palated son of toil can smoke a pipe. By the way, what do you think a girl sent me by way of a present this morning?”
“I don't know,” said Kent. “A hymn book?”
“No; a cigarette holder—mouthpiece, you know. I wrote and told her it was very pretty and I would keep it in memory of her to my dying day; but as for using it, I should just as soon think of kissing her through a respirator.”
“That was unkind,” said Kent, laughing in spite of himself, tickled at the idea.
“Lord bless you, no,” replied Wither oracularly from the depths of his armchair. “It is wholesome to check this frenzy of profusion now and then. When a woman once begins to give she never knows where to stop. When she has exhausted her imagination she gives away herself. It's embarrassing sometimes, for one can't put half a dozen women away in a drawer with the rest of the odds and ends. Oh, no; a little fatherly repression does a world of good to the ingenuous and enthusiastic. I don't pretend to be moral, but I am not without kindly instincts.”
He chuckled sardonically and began to turn over the pages of Punch. Kent smoked on in silence, cheered a little by the familiar chatter.
“Teddy,” he said at last, “you seem to hear all the gossip about town; do you know anything about a man called Hammerdyke?”
“Thornton Hammerdyke—man from Africa—explorer?”
“Yes.”