Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/35

Rh remark disinterestedly that it was a pity to waste such a lovely day indoors—not to take a turn and see what was going on in Paris. But Mr. Dosson had no sense of waste: that came to him much more when he was confronted with historical monuments, or beauties of nature or art, which he didn't understand nor care for: then he felt a little ashamed and uncomfortable—but never when he lounged in that simplifying way in the court. It wanted but a quarter of an hour to dinner (that he could understand) when Delia and Francie at last met his view, still accompanied by Mr. Flack and sauntering in, at a little distance from each other, with a jaded air which was not in the least a tribute to his possible solicitude. They dropped into chairs and joked with each other, with a mixture of sociability and languor, on the subject of what they had seen and done—a question into which he felt as yet a delicacy as to inquiring. But they had evidently done a good deal and had a good time: an impression sufficient to rescue Mr. Dosson personally from the consciousness of failure.

"Won't you just step in and take dinner with us?" he asked of the young man, with a friendliness begotten of the circumstances.

"Well, that's a handsome offer," George Flack replied, while Delia remarked that they had each eaten about thirty cakes.

"Well, I wondered what you were doing so