ONE:CHAPTER IX.For the next week Miss Propert continued to display a galaxy of unvarying excellence in her duties, and Keeling, though he told himself that he had dismissed her overheard criticism from his mind altogether, and perhaps believed that he had done so, acted towards her in sundry little ways, as if he consciously deprecated her opinion and sought to change it. The weather, for instance, continuing very hot, he ordered an electric fan to be placed in the small stuffy den where she did her work, saying nothing about it to her, but setting it going while she was absent for her hours interval in the middle of the day. On another occasion when he was sitting at his table with his hat on, he took it off as she entered, on a third he{89} cleared a space for her to write at when she came to receive his dictation for the morning. In part, though he would have denied it, his dislike of her verdict on him prompted these infinitesimal courtesies, but in part another incentive dictated them. Vaguely and distantly she was beginning to mean something to him personally, she was acquiring a significance apart from her duties. He began to notice not only the speed and efficiency of her fingers, but the comely shape of her hand: he began to heed not only the distinctness of her voice as she read over her shorthand transcripts to him, but its quality. It reminded him rather of Johns voice.... And oftener and oftener as he dictated his correspondence he looked up with his gray eyes set deep below their bushy eyebrows at that quiet, handsome face, which hardly ever raised its eyes to his. Somehow her perfect fulfilment of the complete duties of the secretary, devoid of any other human relationship to him whatever, began to pique him. She treated him as if he had no existence apart from his function as her employer. He had never before had so ideal a secretary, so intelligent and accurate a piece of office-furniture, and now, having got it, he was inconsistent enough to harbour a smothered wish that she was a shade more human in her dealings with him. He wished that she would not call him sir so invariably, whenever {90}she spoke to him: he looked out for the smallest indication on her part of being conscious of him in some human manner. But no such indication appeared, and the complete absence of it vexed him, though as often as it vexed him (the vexation was the smallest of annoyances) he strenuously denied to himself that such a feeling existed at all in his mind.
TWO:Oh, my dear Thomas, you havent heard the terrible news then? she said. I thought you would be sure to have seen it placarded somewhere. Alice went straight to her room, and I havent seen her since, though I repeatedly knocked at the door, which she has locked on the inside, and Im sure its most unnatural of her not to let her own mother comfort her. It all happened in a moment: I have always said those great motor-cars shouldnt be allowed to career about the streets, especially when they are all paved with cobbles as they are at Easton Haven, which are{331} so slippery when its wet. He slipped, and it went over him in a moment.
FORE:The aunt and her nieces were standing in the carry-all, she majestic, they laughing and weeping in the one act. I waved them into their seats.
Nunc at viverra risus. In euismod quam ac dictum varius. Nunc at viverra risus.
Nunc at viverra risus. In euismod quam ac dictum varius. Nunc at viverra risus. In euismod quam ac dictum varius. Nunc at viverra risus. In euismod quam ac dictum varius. Nunc at viverra risus.