Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/210

 youth has no quarrel with a fellow whose blade can shift a good wedge of water, and who is not too cocky about it. You could rag Sorrell—and get that smile, and healthy physical retaliation with it. No one had ever seen him ruffled or malicious. He boxed as he rowed—with the same smiling seriousness.

A fellow named Burgoyne had the rooms below Christopher, and when Kit noticed a big blue saloon waiting outside the house, he assigned it to Burgoyne or to Burgoyne's people. The rich fellow below him had many friends. Hypothetical mothers and aunts and sisters and sisters' friends were always arriving in cars to look up Bertie and have lunch with him. Many of them were rather flashy ladies, ultra modern young gentlewomen with flat chests and shingled hair, who sat on Burgoyne's window sill and smoked cigarettes. They were a cause of offence to Kit.

"Confound the women."

Their clothes and their chatter and the faint yet disturbing feminine aroma of them interfered with his work.

Kit ran up the steps and opened the front door. Burgoyne's part of the house struck him as being unexpectedly peaceful, and he could only suppose that the whole carload of colour had gone on the river. Kit had arrived at the foot of the stairs when Mrs. Jowett, his landlady, appeared from below. She was a stout person, swarthy, with a broad nose and an expansive mouth, perennially interested in all "young gentlemen." She had cared for Hindus and gentlemen of colour, and she had survived. Her only quarrel with Kit was that she could apply to him the word "worthy."

"A lady to see you, sir."

"A lady!"

"She's upstairs. Been here an hour."

"What's her name?"

"Duggan."

Kit looked mystified.

"What sort of—person, Mrs. Jowett?"

The landlady gave him one of her large and much-creased smiles.

"Well,—a lady, sir. That's her car."

Kit went slowly upstairs, wondering who the woman could be, and wishing her elsewhere at the moment. He