Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/240

228 I found it it my waistcoat pocket, put there I did not know when.

Marie opened the door. I told her to tell Amélie to be as quick with dinner as possible, as I wanted to catch a train. Marie agreed and went back, closing the door. 'I have found your small port-manteau,' said Rosy, coming into the dining-room doorway with a noise of the opening curtain-rings. 'Will you come and choose the things you want, because I'm not sure? We went together.

When we, or rather I, had finished packing the portmanteau, we returned to dinner. The portmanteau was to be taken down by the back staircase.

'I forgot the flask. Do you know where it is? You'd like to take the flask with some cognac in it? It's such a pretty flask, and you've never used it!' (She had given it me.)

'Yes,' I said, 'to be sure.' And told Marie to go and bring it.

Marie brought it, and then came the question of the cognac. There was none in the house; which had not struck any of us before. I was for not minding about it, till I saw that Rosy would be hurt if her flask was not used; so Marie was sent down to get some cognac, while Rosy and I went into the study again, not caring for more dinner.

Then Marie returned with the flask filled, which Rosy took from me, and reaching, put on the table. It was not yet time to start. We sat in silence, till I turned my head to look at her seated there with large upward eyes whose gaze was far away somewhere.

'Are you all right now?' I asked.

'Yes,' she said, 'I'm all right.'

I was sorry for her: somehow as I had been sorry for her sitting on the hearth-rug in the fire-lit room waiting for me who stood at the small window. I could not help thinking of the pity of it, that that mistake had been made to give me to her and her to me.

I put my arm round her neck and drew her cheek to meet my lips: 'Rosebud,' I said, 'Rosebud!'