Page:Guy Boothby - The Beautiful White Devil.djvu/219

 though I had telegraphed to her from Naples to expect me, pretended to be so overwhelmed with surprise at seeing me as to be incapable of speech for nearly a minute. I managed to get past her at last, however, and went into what, in the day's of my practice, had been my consulting room. The fire was burning brightly, my slippers wore toasting before it, my writing table was loaded with books and papers as usual, and a comfortable easy chair was drawn up beside it. Everything was exactly as I had left it fourteen months before, even to the paper knife still resting in a half cut book, and a hastily scrawled memo, upon the blotting pad. There was something almost ironical about this state of stagnation when I thought of the changes that had occurred in my own life since last I had used that knife and written that memorandum. I told the old housekeeper to let me have my dinner at the usual hour, and having done so, asked her the news of the Square. Her reply was not important.

"James [her husband] an' me, sir," she said, "'ad the rheumatiz at the beginning of the winter, the young postman with the red whiskers 'ave got married to the parlour maid as burnt herself so bad three years back, at number 99, and the little gal with the golden curls across the way fell down the airey and broke her leg two months ago come next Friday."

Such was the chronicle of the most important occurrences in that quiet London Square during my absence.

After dinner I returned to my study, wrote two or three letters, and then drawing my chair up to the fire, sat down to think. Outside the wind howled and the rain dashed against my windows, but my thoughts were