Page:Herbert Jenkins - Patricia Brent Spinster.djvu/204

 manner. Mr. Bolton was not sure that Bowen would approve of blue underwear, and consequently kept a finger and thumb upon his stud for the greater part of the evening.

As each entered the lounge, it was with a hurried glance round to see if the guest of the evening had arrived, followed by a sigh of relief on discovering that he had not. Mrs. Craske-Morton had taken the precaution of deferring the dinner until eight o'clock. She wished Bowen's entry to be dramatic.

Mrs. Craske-Morton had asked a few friends of her own to meet her distinguished guest; a Miss Plimsoll, who was composed in claret colour and royal blue trimming, and Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Ragbone. Mrs. Ragbone was a stout, jolly woman with a pronounced cockney accent. Mr. Ragbone was a man whose eyebrows seemed to rise higher with each year, and whose manner of patient suffering became more pathetically unreal with the passage of each season. Mrs. Craske-Morton always explained him as a solicitor. Morton, Gofrim and Bowett, of Lincoln's Inn, knew him as their chief clerk.

The atmosphere of the lounge was one of nervous tension. All were listening for the bell which would announce the arrival of Bowen. When last he came, everybody was taken by surprise. Mr. Bolton's stud eluded his grasp, Mr. Sefton felt his back hair, whilst Miss Sikkum blushed rosily at her own daring.