"Why, with that Quinn popped them big glass eyes o' his'n till the whites showed clear round the blue, and s'e 'I know it better than you do; that's just what it suited you to forget. Oh! I'd already seen through you in one flash, you sneak. It's good for you you're not in my command; I'd lift you to a higher sense of whose war this is, damn you, if I had to hang you up by the thumbs.' With that he started right on by, Gholson a-keepin' his face to him as he passed, when Ned Ferry and--her--came out o' the parlor, and Ned turned out on the rear gallery with Quinn while she sort o' smiled at Gholson to come to her and sent him off on some business or other. George! I never seen her so beautiful."Gregg sat up in his chair and became more serious. Allingham fidgeted without actually interrupting.
ONE:"What a difference, indeed!" the boys remarked.Thats what we have both got to do, he said. Weve got to work instead of snivelling, weve got to set our teeth and go ahead. Im going to be busier than Ive been for years. Im going to start a new Stores in Nalesborough, and see after them and the Stores here myself.
ONE:"She's here," murmured Gholson, "because she has to live! To live she must have means, Smith, and to have means she must either get them herself or she must--" and again he poised his hand horizontally across his mouth and whispered--"live with her hus'--""To what command do you fellows belong?"
TWO:"I know what that is," said Fred, who came along at the moment Frank expressed his wonder to Doctor Bronson."But, for all that," Fred responded, "the others may be worse than this."
TWO:Gregg placed a hand soothingly upon his friend's shoulder. "Why didn't you send for me before? You're over-strung. This experience has been too much for you."As the victoria pursued its leisurely way, the spaces between the Blenheims and Chatsworths grew larger, the villas ceased to have but one window on each side of the front door: they stood farther back from the road, and were approached by small carriage drives culminating in what was known as the carriage sweep in front of the house, a gravelled space where a carriage could turn completely round. Two gates led to the carriage sweep, on one of which was painted In, and on the other Out, and the spaces surrounding the houses could justly be called grounds since they embraced tennis lawns and kitchen gardens with glass, and shrubberies with winding paths. Retired colonels must needs have private money of their own in addition to their pensions to live so spaciously, and Mr Keeling, even thus housed, was putting by very considerable sums of money every year. Into one of those carriage drives, advertised{14} to passers-by as the entrance of The Cedars (probably because there were three prosperous larch trees planted near the In gate), Mrs Keelings carriage turned, and after passing some yards of shrubbery stopped before a wooden Gothic porch. Both ladies appeared unconscious of having reached home till a small boy covered with buttons came out of the house and removed the light carriage-rug that covered their knees.
THREE:The Doctor harked back in his mind to the beginning of their talk. "But you objected to[Pg 200] my house," he mused, "that was how the discussion arose. And now we've got somewhere up in the stars."A FREE RIDE. A FREE RIDE.
THREE:Keeling felt, in spite of his business-like habits,{273} that this was unnecessary. True, this was a matter of business, and he should have verified the correctness of Lord Inverbrooms information. But instead he merely put it into his pocket.
