Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/343

 ing opposite her and very close. The first thing that Kit noticed about the man was that he was wearing no hat. His slightly bent and attentive head showed a large sleek blackness above a large white face, one of those formless faces, as though someone had flung a mass of dough against a wall, moulded it casually, and stuck in two big coffeeberries for eyes. The two figures pivoted slightly. Molly had the sparrow in the closed hollow of her hand, and the man was stroking the sparrow's head.

Kit rubbed his chin.

What the devil was the fellow doing there without his hat? Looking very much at home too, and peculiarly friendly. Intimate, almost.

Kit walked thoughtfully away.

Mr. Christopher Sorrell turned up at Chelsea some three evenings later. Roland was out, and Kit had no quarrel with Thomas Roland's absence, for Cherry was the person whom he wanted to see and to whom he wished to talk. Quite casually of course. His curiosity, a surprisingly aggressive curiosity had been pricking him. Very absurd, but he would not allow that there was anything more in it than curiosity.

Cherry was at the piano in the red and black room, enjoying one of those idle and solitary hours when music comes and sits at your elbow. She smiled at Kit, but did not leave the piano, and he sat down behind her, and at a distance, in one of the black and gold chairs.

"Want to talk or listen?"

"O, go on, please," and she knew at once that he wanted to talk.

But dallying with the notes for a minute or more before turning on the square stool, she was more attentive to him and the feel of him than Kit imagined, for when a potent and purposeful young man like Kit arrived in the room and set it vibrating Cherry caught the tremor of his unrealized mystery and turned it into music.

"Tom is dining at the 'Savage.

"Is he? I have never been there."

"Get him to take you some night."