Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/371

 '''CHAP: XVII. KANGAROO IS KILLED'''

" Lovat, also Mrs Lovat: I don't think it is very nice of you that you don't even call with a tract or a tuberose, when you know I am so smitten. Yours, Kangaroo.

P.S.—Bullets in my marsupial pouch."

Of course Richard went up at once: and Harriet sent a little box with all the different strange shells from the beach. They are curious and interesting for a sick man.

Somers found Kangaroo in bed, very yellow, and thin, almost lantern-jawed, with haunted, frightened eyes. The room had many flowers, and was perfumed with eau-de-cologne, but through the perfume came an unpleasant, discernable stench. The nurse had asked Richard, please to be very quiet.

Kangaroo put out a thin yellow hand. His black hair came wispily, pathetically over his forehead. But he said, with a faint, husky briskness:

"Hello! Come at last," and he took Somers' hand in a damp clasp.

"I didn't know whether you could see visitors," said Richard.

"I can't. Sit down. Behave yourself."

Somers sat down, only anxious to behave himself.

"Harriet sent you such a silly present," he said. "Just shells we have picked up from the shore. She thought you might like to play with them on the counterpane—"

"Like that sloppy Coventry Patmore poem. Let me look."

The sick man took the little Sorrento box with its inlaid design of sirens and peered in at the shells.

"I can smell the sea in them," he said hoarsely.

And very slowly he began to look at the shells, one by one. There were black ones like buds of coal, and black ones with a white spiral thread, and funny knobbly black and white ones, and tiny purple ones, and a bright sea-orange, semi-transparent clamp shell, and little pink ones with long, sharp points, and glass ones, and lovely pearly ones, and then those that Richard had put in, worn shells like sea-ivory, marvellous substance, with all the structure