Page:No More Parades (Albert & Charles Boni).djvu/172

 time the poor dear fellow was buying the railway tickets

And, by heavens, he had been right For when she came to think of it, from the day that poor saint had said that thing in her mother's sitting-room in the little German spa—Lobscheid, it must have been called—in the candle-light, his shadow denouncing her from all over the walls, to now when she sat in the palmish wickerwork of that hotel that had been new-whitely decorated to celebrate hostilities, never once had she sat in a train with a man who had any right to look. upon himself as justified in mauling her about She wondered if, from where he sat in heaven, Father Consett would be satisfied with her as he looked down into that lounge Perhaps it was really he that had pulled off that change in her

Never once till yesterday For perhaps the unfortunate Perowne might just faintly have had the right yesterday to make himself for about two minutes—before she froze him into a choking, pallid snowman with goggle eyes-the perfectly loathsome thing that a man in a railway train becomes Much too bold and yet stupidly awkward with the fear of the guard looking in at the window, the train doing over sixty, without corridors No, never again for me, father, she addressed her voice towards the ceiling

Why in the world couldn't you get a man to go away with you and be just—oh, light comedy—for a whole, a whole blessed week-end. For a whole blessed life Why not Think of it A whole blessed life with a man who was a good sort and yet didn't go all gurgly in the voice, and cod-fish-eyed and all-overish—to the extent of not being able to find the tickets when asked for them Father, dear, she