Page:Georgie by Dorothea Deakin, 1906.djvu/217

The Gladiators No one can excuse him on the ground of not meaning them, for he is essentially single-minded. At the moment Georgie means literally everything he says.

"When you came in," I said coldly, "I was up to the eyes in a most important chapter of 'The Lost Columbine.' If you have nothing more to say, suppose you leave me to it."

Indeed I was thinking all through his discontented talk, of that crowning piece of delicate poetical word-painting. Even as he broke in, the dryad was finding my Columbine crying in the wood over the fallen statue of the little stone Cupid. Half hidden in the long dank grass, it had that moment caught her eye. She had taken it to her heart and the dryad, hearing her sobs, was coming towards her through the beech trees.

My heart, too, was in the beechwoods, and for Georgie to come blithering about his football woes at such a moment was—oh, infernal. And all my polite attention was to be repaid with insult. 201