Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/66

 which Kirke would have liked so well, for there was none with quite the same view, the same intimate angle on the affairs of the two hotels. His insatiable curiosity towards life, his satirical pleasure in the rôle of onlooker at the follies of those about him, found endless scope here.

A dray was being unloaded of casks of ale in the entrance below. Bill Bastien was talking with the driver, counting the casks. Kirke counted them too. Charley Bye and Davy were putting them into the cellar. Kirke wondered how much of that ale would be sold by Bastien dishonestly and the money appropriated for himself. He was a thief, and Mrs. Jessop no better, lining their pockets with the absent owner's profits.

"How d'you spell voluptuous?" inquired Lovering.

"Man," said Kirke, grinning, "that's an awful word to use in a letter to your wife. You'll have her over here before you can say scat."

"You be damned!" replied Lovering. "Tell me how to spell the word."

"I really think you mak' a mistake," went on his friend, "in using such words to a simple wifely body. You'll instill bad ideas into her head."

"She's not a simple body. She's a fier-ry piece—is my wife."

"All the more reason, then," said Kirke, "not to excite her. But—perhaps you were describing Miss Mainprize to her."

"Tha'rt gone on that bitch thyself, Duncan," said Lovering.

"Nonsense," replied Kirke calmly. "Now for veeluptuous—v-o-l-u-p-t-u-o-u-s. It's a fine mouthful of a word to fling at your fiery wife across the sea."

Lovering did not answer. He was busy getting down