"I haven't been ordered to tell any one where I'm going."Keeling sank down in the chair on which he had been leaning. He felt completely tired out.
ONE:We went on some steps in silence and entered the gate of the house-grove; and just as Ferry would have replied we discovered before us in the mottled shade of the driveway, with her arm on Ccile's shoulders as his lay on mine, and with her eyes counting her slackening steps, Charlotte Oliver. They must have espied us already out in the highway, for they also were turned toward the house, and as we neared them Charlotte faced round with a cheery absence of surprise and said "Mr. Smith, don't we owe each other a better acquaintance? Suppose we settle up."He found Emmeline alone, just beginning to make tea in the heavily fluted tea-pot with its equipage of harlequin cups and saucers. Alice and John were somewhere in the grounds. Hugh had gone to see his young lady (the expression was Mrs Keelings), and she herself had suffered a slight eclipse from her usual geniality owing to her mother having stopped the whole afternoon, and having thus interrupted her reading, by which she meant going gently to sleep on the sofa, with her book periodically falling off her lap. The first two times that this happened she almost invariably picked it up, on the third occasion she{48} had really gone to sleep, and the rumble of its avalanche did not disturb her. But the loss of this intellectual refreshment had rendered her rather querulous, and since she was not of very vigorous vitality, her querulousness oozed in a leaky manner from her instead of discharging itself at high pressure. A tea-leaf had stuck, too, in the spout of the tea-pot, which made that handsome piece contribute to the general impression of dribbling at Mrs Keelings tea-table; it also provided her with another grievance, though not quite so acute as that which took its rise from what had occurred at lunch.
"In an hour we received another message, written in blood, like the first. It promised to deliver the ringleaders of the mutiny, to be kept in irons till we arrived at our destination, and also promised that there should be no more attempts to set fire to the ship. The captain was to fix the number of men to be on deck at one time, and they were to obey his orders without question. In fact, the surrender was complete.He looked directly at Arthur. "And dreaming," he added. "We dream, you know."He put the block down, laid the two impressions on the top of it, and turned over the leaves of his cheque-book in order to pay for the thing at once. But she picked up her work, and without a word began wrapping it up in the paper she had just taken off it. Already he knew he had made a blunder, and the blunder was the act of a cad. It had been his business to ask the price beforehand, if he wanted to know it, not to{124} quarrel with it afterwards. But the cad in him had full possession just then.Ah, but now I remember that Miss Propert did not want you to give them notice, she said. Now we can guess why you took it back again. Oh, not a word more. I am discretion itself.{310}I dont dictate to you at all, he said. I only remind you of Norahs wishes.I should like to express to you by actual word of mouth, Sir Thomas, he said, my regret at what happened to-day. I am all the more sorry for it, because I notice that in our rules the landlord of the club is ex officio a member of it. If you only had told me that you had become our landlord, I could have informed you of that, and spared you this annoyance.
路见不平Eason吼
