The Roll-Call eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 438 pages of information about The Roll-Call.

The Roll-Call eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 438 pages of information about The Roll-Call.

She looked at him.

“You’ll get that town hall to do,” she said positively.  “You’re bound to get it.  You’ll see.”

Her incomprehensible but convincing faith passed mysteriously into him. 
A holy dew relieved him.  He began to feel happy.

Lois glanced again at the paper, which with arms outstretched she held in front of her like a man, like the men at Pickering’s.  Suddenly it fell rustling to the floor, and she burst into tears.

She murmured indistinctly:  “The last thing she did was for my pleasure—­sending the car.”

George jumped up, animated by an inexpressible tenderness for her.  She had weakened.  He moved towards her.  He did not consider what he was doing; he had naught to say; but his instinctive arms were about to clasp her.  He was unimaginably disturbed.  She straightened and stiffened in a second.

“But of course you’ve not got it yet,” she said harshly, with apparent irrelevance.

Seraphine entered bouncingly with the tea.  Lois regarded the tray, and remarked the absence of the strainer.

Et la passoire?” she demanded, with implacable sternness.

Seraphine gave a careless, apologetic gesture.

VII

It was late in September, when most people had returned to London after the holidays.  John Orgreave mounted to the upper floor of the house in Russell Square where George had his office.  Underneath George’s name on the door had been newly painted the word ‘Inquiries,’ and on another door, opposite, the word ‘Private.’  John Orgreave knocked with exaggerated noise at this second door and went into what was now George’s private room.

“I suppose one ought to knock,” he said in his hearty voice.

“Hallo, Mr. Orgreave!” George exclaimed, jumping up.

“If the mountain doesn’t come to Mahomet, Mahomet must come to the mountain,” said John Orgreave.

“Come in,” said George.

He noticed, and ignored, the touch of sarcasm in John Orgreave’s attitude.  He had noticed a similar phenomenon in the attitude of various people within the last four days, since architectural circles and even the world in general had begun to resound with the echoing news that the competition for the northern town hall had been won by a youth not twenty-three years of age.  Mr. Enwright had been almost cross, asserting that the victory was perhaps a fluke, as the design of another competitor was in reality superior to George’s.  Mr. Enwright had also said, in his crabbed way:  “You’ll soon cut me out”; and, George protesting, had gone on:  “Oh!  Yes, you will.  I’ve been through this sort of thing before.  I know what I’m talking about.  You’re no different from the rest.”  Whereupon George, impatient and genuinely annoyed, had retorted upon him quite curtly, and had remembered what many persons had said about Mr. Enwright’s wrong-headed jealous sensitiveness—­animadversions

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Roll-Call from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.