Page:The Finer Grain (London, Methuen & Co., 1910).djvu/131

Rh did nothing of the sort, fortunately; she was as stuffed with supersessive answers as if she were the latest number of a penny periodical: it was only a matter still of his continuing to pay his penny. She wasn't, moreover, his attention noted, trying to be portentous; she was much rather secretly and perversely serene—the basis of which condition did a little tax his fancy. What on earth had Puddick done to her—since he hadn't been able to bring her out Mora—that had made her distinguishably happier beneath the mere grimness of her finally scoring at home than she had been for so many months? The best she could have learned from him—Sidney might even at this point have staked his life upon it—wouldn't have been that she could hope to make Mrs Puddick the centre of a grand rehabilitative tea-party. "Why, then," he went on again, "if they were married a month ago, and he was so ready to stay with you two hours, hadn't he come sooner?"

"He didn't come to tell me they were married,—not on purpose for that," Jane said after a little,and as if the fact itself were scarce more than a trifle,—compared at least with others she was possessed of, but that she didn't yet mention.

"Well,"—Traffle frankly waited now,—"what in the world did he come to tell you?"

She made no great haste with it. "His fears."

"What fears—at present?" he disingenuously asked.

"'At present?' Why, it's just 'at present' that