Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/219

Rh "Is that so?" the old gentleman had asked, helplessly.

Francie's visitor came down a few minutes later and passed through the court and out of the hotel without looking at them. Mr. Dosson had been going to call after him, but Delia checked him with a violent pinch. The unsociable manner of the young journalist's departure added to Mr. Dosson's sense of the mystery of things. I think this may be said to have been the only incident in the whole business that gave him a personal pang. He remembered how many of his cigars he had smoked with Mr. Flack and how universal a participant he had made him. This struck him as the failure of friendship, and not the publication of details about the Proberts. Deep in Mr. Dosson's spirit was a sense that if these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he couldn't pity them, and if they hadn't done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people knowing. It was therefore, in spite of the young man's rough exit, still in the tone of American condonation that he had observed to Delia: "He says that's what they like over there and that it stands to reason that if you start a paper you've got to give them what they like. If you want the people with you, you've got to be with the people."

"Well, there are a good many people in the world. I don't think the Proberts are with us much."