Page:JM Barrie--My lady nicotine.djvu/132

128 he sat down, taking me from his pocket; and here, I think, he meant to recall the days that were dead. But a cold, piercing wind was blowing, and many times he looked at his watch, putting it to his ear as if he thought it had stopped. After a little he took to flinging stones into the water, for something to do; and then he went to the hotel and stayed there till he got a train back to London. We were home many hours before he meant to be back, and that night he went to a theater.

"That was my last day in the leather case. He keeps something else in it now. He flung me among old papers, smoking-caps, slippers, and other odds and ends into a box, where I have remained until to-night. A month or more ago he rummaged in the box for some old letters, and coming upon me unexpectedly, he jagged his finger on the wire. 'Where on earth did you come from?' he asked me. Then he remembered, and flung me back among the papers with a laugh. Now we come to to-night. An hour ago I heard him blowing down something, then stamping his feet. From his words I knew that his pipe was stopped. I heard him ring a bell and ask angrily who had gone off with his pipe-cleaners. He bustled through the room looking for them or for a substitute, and after a time he cried aloud, 'I have it; that would do; but where was it I saw the thing last?' He