Page:The Finer Grain (London, Methuen & Co., 1910).djvu/64

52 be, if we keep our heads and take time,—with such an extraordinary person as Mora, don't you see? to deal with. You must grant me," Mr Puddick had wound up, "that she's a rum case."

II

he had first felt, of course, was the rare coolness of it, the almost impudent absence of any tone of responsibility,—which had begun by seeming to make the little painter-man's own case as "rum," surely, as one could imagine it. He had gone, poor troubled Traffle, after the talk, straight to his own studio, or to the rather chill and vague, if scrupulously neat, pavilion at the garden-end, which he had put up eight years ago in the modest hope that it would increasingly inspire him; since it wasn't making preparations and invoking facilities that constituted swagger, but, much rather, behaving as if one's powers could boldly dispense with them. He was certain Jane would come to him there, on hearing of him from the parlour-maid, to whom he had said a word in the hall. He wasn't afraid—no,—of having to speak a little as he felt; but, though well aware of his wife's impatience, he wasn't keen, either, for any added intensity of effort to abound only in Mrs Traffle's sense. He required space and margin, he required a few minutes' time, to say to himself frankly that this dear dismal lady had no