“Ah, no,” she protested, laughing. “You’re too sarcastic. Punting is really very good fun.”
“For ladies, no doubt,” I said. “But men prefer sculling. They’ve no waists to show, nor pretty flannel frocks to exhibit to the river crowd.”
“Ah, Frank, you always were a little harsh in your conclusions,” she sighed. “I suppose it is because you sometimes write criticisms. Critics, I have always imagined, should be old and quarrelsome persons—you are not.”
“No,” I responded. “But old critics too often view things through their own philosophical spectacles. The younger school take a much broader view of life. I’m not, however, a critic,” I added, “I’m only a journalist.”
I could hear old Mrs Joad growling to herself because the steak was ready and she could not lay the cloth because of my visitor. Meanwhile, the room had become filled to suffocation with the fumes of frizzling meat, until a blue haze seemed to hang over everything. So used was I to this choking state of things that until that moment I never noticed it. Then I quickly rose and opened the window with a word of apology that the place “smelt stuffy.”
She glanced around the shabby, smoke-mellowed room, and declared that it pleased her. Of course bachelors had to shift for themselves a good deal, she said, yet this place was not at all uncomfortable. I told her of my companion who shared the chambers with me, of his genius as a journalist, and how merrily we kept house together, at which she was much interested. All girls are more or less interested in bachelors’ arrangements.
Our gossip drifted mostly into the bygones—of events at Harwell, and the movements of various mutual friends, when suddenly Dick Cleugh burst into the room crying—
“I say, old chap, there’s another first-class horror! Oh! I beg your pardon,” he said in apology, drawing back on noticing Mary. “I didn’t know you had a visitor; forgive me.”
“Let me introduce you,” I said, laughing at his sudden confusion. “Mr Cleugh—Miss Blain.”
The pair exchanged greetings, when Cleugh, with that merry good humour that never deserted him, said—