Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/345

Rh ostler curricombing his horse, nor the woman shaking a table-cloth out of a window, nor the sparrows quarrelling for the crumbs, nor the back of a maid seated outside a house on a window-ledge cleaning the glass, or she saw these things through a watery film.

She was roused by a tap at her door. She hastily dried her eyes, and stood up, with her back to the light, that her discomposure might be unobserved, and called to the person without to enter.

A waiter opened the door and announced that a gentleman had called, and was below in a private sitting-room. He extended a tray, and Miss Inglett took from it a card, and read, "Mr. James Welsh."

"I will come down directly," she said.

The waiter bowed and closed the door.

Arminell tarried for a moment only, to recover herself, and then descended. She expected to see Jingles with his uncle, but he was not in the room.

"At your service, Miss Inglett. I am the uncle of Hansel who has run away with Grethel. You find that you have not come to the cottage of almond rock, with windows of barley sugar. You are not, I suppose, interested in politics?"

"No, or only slightly. Social subjects—"

"Neither in Monday's paper. Never in my life saw one with less of interest in it, no news, nothing but a Temperance Demonstration at Exeter Hall, presided over by the Reverend Jowles. It is not worth your while looking into a paper to-day."

"Is Mr. Saltren returned?" asked Arminell.

"Damped off," replied Welsh. "That is a process whereby an amateur loses a good many cuttings and seedlings. Hansel came to me with any amount of young hopes and ambitions and cockscombs—especially, and I have damped them all off. Expected to make a fortune in literature, wanted to tread the walks of political