Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/77

 coat-pocket, extracted a pink slip of paper therefrom, and handed it over to Campaspe.

As much as that! Are you feeding the boy?

No, he has his own money.

This is all?

Another cheque in a month. . . . Sooner, if I want it. There are no limits set to my rapacity. Oh! he's rich!

Well, Paulet, you're in luck again. You're always lucky, she commented, rather pensively.

I don't do anything about it: his answer was not uncomplacent.

Nothing unpleasant ever happens to you, she continued to muse aloud, or if it does, like Amy's divorce, it serves to make something pleasant happen. Even when you were in Ludlow Street Jail you ate hot-house grapes and pickled walnuts and read Turgenieff. I sometimes regret that I didn't marry you myself.

I wish you had.

God forbid! It's better for us to be friends.

Alive to the cozenage, Paulet's face assumed the rather silly but extremely sympathetic expression of a chow puppy having its belly massaged by a friendly hand.

I haven't given you a cocktail, he remembered. Ki!

A diminutive Jap in a white linen uniform appeared from the alcove.

Make some of your best Bacardi cocktails.