Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/15

 fresh arrival. Four men from the dye works came in together, their hands, in spite of scrubbing, stained by the dyes they worked in. Then, half a dozen tannery hands, bringing with them their own peculiar nauseating scent. Kirke knew them and nodded curtly.

"It's a fine nicht," he said, biting off the vowels like bits of ice.

"Yes, it's not bad," agreed one.

"It's blowing up a mist," said another.

"Perhaps you'd call this fine in Scotland," said a third.

"We'd call you a fine fool in Scotland," bit off Kirke, grinning.

The men passed into the bar. The noise increased, rising to a hubbub, then suddenly falling to a murmur accented by low laughs, the clink of glasses, the drawing of corks. The smell of dyes, the smell of the tannery, mingled with the smell of the bar. A blue cloud of tobacco smoke formed before Kirke's eyes. It floated in long level shreds that moved quiveringly together till they formed one mass that hung like a magic carpet in the hall. He watched it contemplatively, his lips still in the formation of exhaling. He hoped very much that Charley Bye would not pass through it before it reached the dining-room door.

In the most select of the three little drinking-rooms a hand was striking a table-bell at sharp, regular intervals: ding, ding, ding-ding, ding. Charley appeared to take the order.

"Chairley, dive under yon cloud, d'ye hear?" said Kirke, indicating the magic carpet with his pipe. "Dive under, mon, or it'll be the worse for ye."

With a bewildered look, like a timid bull that desires only to avoid the tormenting matador, Charley ducked heavily under the smoke cloud and disappeared into the