Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/38

28 Mrs. D. S. Rosenheim and Miss Cora Rosenheim and Master Samuel Rosenheim had "left for Brussels."

Mr. Flack was wonderful on all occasions in finding what he wanted (which, as we know, was what he believed the public wanted), and Delia was the only one of the party with whom he was sometimes a little sharp. He had embraced from the first the idea that she was his enemy, and he alluded to it with almost tiresome frequency, though always in a humorous, fearless strain. Even more than by her fashion of hanging over the registers she provoked him by appearing to think that their little party was not sufficient to itself; by wishing, as he expressed it, to work in new stuff. He might have been easy, however, for he had sufficient chance to observe how it was always the fate of the Dossons to miss their friends. They were continually looking out for meetings and combinations that never came off, hearing that people had been in Paris only after they had gone away, or feeling convinced that they were there but not to be found through their not having registered, or wondering whether they should overtake them if they should go to Dresden, and then making up their minds to start for Dresden, only to learn, at the eleventh hour, through some accident, that the elusive party had gone to Biarritz. "We know plenty of people if we could only come across them,"