Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/202

192 her father quietly addressed a few words, by letter, to George Flack. This communication was not of a minatory order; it expressed on the contrary the loose sociability which was the essence of Mr. Dosson's nature. He wanted to see Mr. Flack, to talk the whole thing over, and the desire to hold him to an account would play but a small part in the interview. It was much more definite to him that the soreness of the Proberts was a kind of unexpected insanity (so little did his experience match it), than that a newspaper-man had misbehaved in trying to turn out an attractive article. As the newspaper-man happened to be the person with whom he had most consorted for some time back he felt drawn to him in the presence of a new problem, and somehow it did not seem to Mr. Dosson to disqualify him as a source of comfort that it was just he who had been the fountain of injury. The injury was a sort of emanation of the crazy Proberts. Moreover Mr. Dosson could not dislike at such short notice, a man who had smoked so many of his cigars, ordered so many of his dinners and helped him so loyally to spend his money: such acts constituted a bond, and when there was a bond people gave it a little jerk in time of trouble. His letter to Nice was the little jerk.

The morning after Francie had turned her back on Gaston and left him planted in the salon (he