Page:Love and Mr. Lewisham – Wells (1899).djvu/27

Rh length and capitals! Could it really be—? He stopped. He looked again, eyebrows rising. He held it before him, staring now quite frankly. It had been written with a stylographic pen. Thus it ran:

"Come! Sharp's the word."

And then again,

"Come! Sharp's the word."

And then,

"Come! Sharp's the word."

"Come! Sharp's the word."

And so on all down the page, in a boyish hand uncommonly like Frobisher ii.'s.

Surely! "I say!" said Mr. Lewisham, struggling with the new aspect and forgetting all his manners in his surprise. He remembered giving the imposition quite well:—Frobisher ii. had repeated the exhortation just a little too loudly—had brought the thing upon himself. To find her doing this jarred oddly upon certain vague preconceptions he had formed of her. Somehow it seemed as if she had betrayed him. That of course was only for the instant.

She had come up with him now. "May I have my sheet of paper, please?" she said with a catching of her breath. She was a couple of inches less in height than he. Do you observe her half-open lips, said Mother Nature in a noiseless aside to Mr.