Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/174

 during the last three years shared in the fortunes of the book. Peter had come to dinner with a cloud upon his brow—the book therefore has gone badly—even Mrs. Brockett is disturbed and Mrs. Lazarus is less chirpy than usual. Peter comes to dinner with a smile—the book therefore has gone well and even Mrs. Monogue is a little less selfish than ordinary. The Signor now gazed round the little room as though he might find there the secret of so great an achievement. On Peter's dressing-table the manuscript was piled—“You'll miss it,” the Signor said, gloomily. “You'll miss it very much—you're bound to. You'll have to get it typewritten, and that'll cost money.”

“Never mind, it's done,” said Peter, shaking his head as a dog shakes himself when he leaves the water. “There they are, those people—and now I'm going to wash.”

He stripped to the waist, and the Signor watched his broad back and strong arms with a sigh for his own feeble proportions. He wondered how it was that being in a stuffy bookshop for seven years had done Peter no harm, he wondered how he could keep the back of his neck so brown as that in London and his cheeks as healthy a colour and his eyes as clear.

“I'm amazingly unpleasant to look at,” the Signor said at last. “I often wonder why my wife married me, I'm not surprised that every one finds me uninteresting. I am uninteresting.”

“Well, you are not uninteresting to me, I can tell you,” said Peter. He had put on a soft white shirt, a black tie, and a black coat and trousers, the last of these a little shiny perhaps in places, but neat and well brushed, and you would really not guess when you saw him, that he only possessed two suits in the wide world.

“I think you're absorbing,” Peter said, a little patronisingly perhaps.

“Ah, that proves nothing,” the Signor retorted. “You only care for fools and children—Mrs. Brockett always says so.”

They went downstairs—Peter was, of course, not hungry at all, but the conventions had to be observed. In the sitting-room, round about the green settee, the company was waiting as it had waited seven years ago; there were one or