Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/191

 She looked at him swiftly. He was in deadly earnest.

"Perhaps she doesn't mind," she suggested tentatively.

"Doesn't mind?" he cried. "What woman doesn't mind being unattractive? Imagine what she must feel when she sees you."

Again she flashed at him an enquiring look; but there was nothing in his face suggestive of a compliment.

"You have all she lacks," he continued, "and it's all—it's all—oh, absolutely rotten," he finished up, ejecting the ashes from his pipe by knocking it vigorously upon the handle of his stick. Then a moment later catching her eye he laughed. "I suppose I'm on my hobby-horse," he said.

"But why bully me?" she asked plaintively.

"Was I bullying you?" he said. "I'm dreadfully sorry; but such things render me capable of bullying the Fates themselves. You see I was just cataloguing that poor girl's disabilities when you came into the room, and it made me feel a selfish beast."

"But how?" she asked.

"Don't you see I ought to be trying to give her a good time instead of"

"Giving me a good time," she suggested avoiding his gaze.

"Letting you give me a good time," he concluded. "Oh! let's sit down, perhaps I shall get into a better humour if I listen to the larks. Yet it makes me murderous when I think of those old ruffians in