Thus, as the day wore on, was Bob thrice impelled
towards Mary—by initial attraction of her
beauty; by natural instinct to show himself master
where, till now, he had been bested; and by the stabbings
of his wounded vanity.
On Monday morning, then, he caught the ten o’clock
train to town, hot in the determination immediately
to see her and instantly to press his suit. He
would try, he told himself, a new strategy. Bold
assault had been proved ill-advised; for frontal attack
must be substituted an advance more crafty. Its
plan required no seeking. He would play—and,
to a certain extent, would sincerely play—the
part of penitent. He would apologise for Friday’s
lapse; would explain it to have been the outcome of
sheer despair of ever winning her good graces.
As to where he would find her he had no doubts.
Dozing one day over a book, he had not driven David
and Angela from the room until they had forced upon
him a wearisome account of the secluded seat they had
discovered in Regent’s Park. His patience
in listening was an example of the profit of casting
one’s bread upon the waters; for, making without
hesitation for the seat, he discovered Mary.
The children, as he approached, were standing before
her. David had scratched his finger, and the
three were breathlessly examining the wounded hand
for traces of the disaster. Brightly Mary was
explaining that the place of the wound was over the
home of very big drops of “blug,” which
could not possibly squeeze out of so tiny a window;
when Angela, turning at footsteps, exclaimed:
“Oh, dear, oh, dear, what shall we do?
Here’s Bob!”
Alarm drummed in Mary’s heart: fluttered
upon her cheeks. She had felt, as she told her
George, so certain that from Bob she had now not even
acknowledgment to fear, that this deliberate intrusion
set her mind bounding into disordered apprehensions—stumbling
among them, terrified, out of breath.
When he had raised his hat, bade her good morning,
she could but sit dumbly staring at him-questioning,
incapable of speech.
It was Angela that answered his salutation: “Oh,
why have you come here? You spoil everything.”
“Hook!” said Bob.
David asked: “What’s hook?”
“Run away.”
“Why?”
“Because I tell you to.”
“Why?”
Bob exclaimed: “Hasn’t mother told
you not to say ‘Why’ like that? Run
away and play. I want to speak to Miss Humfray.”
David swallowed the rising interrogation; substituted
instead an observant poke: “Miss Humfray
doesn’t want to speak to you. She hates
you.”
The uncompromising directness of these brats, their
gross ill-mannerliness, was a matter of which Bob
made constant complaint to his mother. The belief
that he observed a twitch at the corner of Mary’s
mouth served further to harden his tones.
