“He writes one or two pages of description of what May must be in England—the fresh sweet green of the country lanes, the cool lawns, the old grey churches peeping through the trees, the restful, undulating country, the smell of the hawthorn and blackthorn at dawn and eve—those are his words—the poor man’s so sick for home that he has turned into a twopenny ha’penny poet——”
“I think it’s damned pathetic,” said Tommy. “Don’t you, Uncle Ephraim?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Quixtus with a start.
“Don’t you think it’s pathetic for a chap stranded sick in a God-forsaken place in China, to write that high falutin’ stuff about England? Clementina read it to me. It’s the sort of thing a girl of fifteen might have written as a school essay—all the obvious things you know—and it meant such a devil of a lot to him—everything on earth. It fairly made me choke. I call it damned pathetic.”
Quixtus said in a dry voice, “Yes, it’s pathetic—it’s comic—it’s tragic—it’s melodramatic—it’s nostalgic—it’s climatic—— Yes,” he added, absently, “it’s climatic.”
“I wonder you don’t say it’s dyspeptic and psychic and fantastic,” said Clementina, snatching an old hat from the bed. “Do you know you’ve talked nothing but rubbish ever since you entered this room?”
“Language, my dear Clementina,” he quoted; “was given to us to conceal our thoughts.”
“Bah!” said Clementina. She held out her hand abruptly. “Good-bye. I’ll run in later, Tommy; and see how you’re getting on.”
Quixtus opened the door for her to pass out and returned to his straight-backed chair. Tommy handed him a box of cigarettes.
“Won’t you smoke? I tried one cigarette to-day for the first time, but the beastly thing tasted horrid—just as if I were smoking oatmeal.”