Page:The Finer Grain (London, Methuen & Co., 1910).djvu/103

Rh Puddick promptly returned to this, "is that she's the very cleverest, and most original, and most endowed, and in every way most wonderful, person I've known in all my life."

His entertainer fairly glowed, for response, with the light of it. "Thank you, then!" Traffle thus radiated.

"'Thank you for nothing!'" cried the other with a short laugh, and set into motion down the steps and the garden walk by this final attestation of the essential impenetrability even of an acutest young artist's vie intime with a character sketchable in such terms.

Traffle accompanied him to the gate, but wondering, as they went, if it was quite inevitable one should come back to feeling, as the result of every sort of brush with people who were really living, like so very small a boy. No, no, one must stretch to one's tallest again. It restored one's stature a little then that one didn't now mind that this demonstration would prove to Jane, should she be waiting in the drawing-room and watching for one's return, that one had retained their guest for so much privacy in the porch. "Well, take care what you do!" Traffle bravely brought out for good-bye.

"Oh, I shall tell her," Puddick replied, under the effect of his renewed pat of the back; and even, standing there an instant, had a further indulgence.

"She loathes my unfortunate name of course;