Part 45 (2/2)
Wealthy! Under thirty! Broad-minded! No provincial prejudices! Her voice, that always affected his spine! Her delicious flattery! She was no mean actress either! And the multifariousness of her seductive charular woman of the world, such as you would read about--if you did read! He was sitting with her again in the obscurity of the discussion-roo again
Pooh!
A single wrench and he ripped up the letter, and cast it into one of the red-lined waste-paper baskets hich the i-room of the Majestic was dotted
Before he had finished dealing with Mr Marrier's queries and suggestions--some ten thousand in all--the clock struck, and Nellie tripped into the rooold chains As she had explained, she had nothing to wear, and was therefore obliged to fall back on the final resource of every wonified ”nothing except my black silk”--at any rate in the Five Towns
”Mr Marrier--my wife Nellie, this is Mr Marrier”
Mr Marrier was profuse: no other ould describe his deirl Indeed she looked quite youthful, despite the ageing influences of black silk
”So that's your Mr Marrier! I understood from you he was a clerk!”
said Nellie, tartly, suddenly retransformed into the shrewd one She had conceived Marrier as a sort of Penkethman! Edward Henry had hoped to avoid this interview
He shrugged his shoulders in answer to his wife's remark
”Well,” he said, ”where are the kids?”
”Waiting in the lounge with nurse, as you said to be” Her mien delicately informed him that while in London his caprices would be her lahich she would obey without seeking to comprehend
”Well,” he went on, ”I expect they'd like the parks as well as anything Suppose we take 'em and show 'em one of the parks? Shall we?
Besides, they reed ”But how far will it be?”
”Oh!” said Edward Henry, ”we'll crowd into a taxi”
They crowded into a taxi, and the children found their father in high spirits Maisie mentioned the doll In a minute the taxi had stopped in front of a toy-shop surpassing dreams, and they invaded the toy-shop like an ared, after a considerable interval, nurse was carrying an enor Maisie, and Ralph was lovingly stroking the doll's real shoes Robert kept a profound silence--a silence which had begun in the train
”You haven't got much to say, Robert,” his father reain
”I know,” said Robert, gruffly As, he resented his best clothes on a week-day
”What do you think of London?”
”I don't know,” said Robert
His eyes never left theof the taxi
Then they visited the theatre--a very fatiguing enterprise, and also, for Edward Henry, a very nervous one He was as aard in displaying that inchoate theatre as a newly-made father with his first-born