Passing of the Third Floor Back | Page 5

Pennycherry.
"I am not so sure," returned the stranger. "I am somewhat suspicious of
you. But wilful woman must, I suppose, have her way."
The stranger held out his hand, and to Mrs. Pennycherry, at that
moment, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to take it as if it
had been the hand of an old friend and to end the interview with a
pleasant laugh--though laughing was an exercise not often indulged in
by Mrs. Pennycherry.

Mary Jane was standing by the window, her hands folded in front of
her, when Mrs. Pennycherry re-entered the kitchen. By standing close
to the window one caught a glimpse of the trees in Bloomsbury Square
and through their bare branches of the sky beyond.
"There's nothing much to do for the next half hour, till Cook comes
back. I'll see to the door if you'd like a run out?" suggested Mrs.
Pennycherry.
"It would be nice," agreed the girl so soon as she had recovered power
of speech; "it's just the time of day I like."
"Don't be longer than the half hour," added Mrs. Pennycherry.
Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square, assembled after dinner in the
drawing-room, discussed the stranger with that freedom and frankness
characteristic of Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square, towards the absent.
"Not what I call a smart young man," was the opinion of Augustus
Longcord, who was something in the City.
"Thpeaking for mythelf," commented his partner Isidore, "hav'n'th any
uthe for the thmart young man. Too many of him, ath it ith."
"Must be pretty smart if he's one too many for you," laughed his
partner.
There was this to be said for the repartee of Forty-eight Bloomsbury
Square: it was simple of construction and easy of comprehension.
"Well it made me feel good just looking at him," declared Miss Kite,
the highly coloured. "It was his clothes, I suppose--made me think of
Noah and the ark--all that sort of thing."
"It would be clothes that would make you think--if anything," drawled
the languid Miss Devine. She was a tall, handsome girl, engaged at the
moment in futile efforts to recline with elegance and comfort combined
upon a horsehair sofa. Miss Kite, by reason of having secured the only
easy-chair, was unpopular that evening; so that Miss Devine's remark
received from the rest of the company more approbation than perhaps it
merited.
"Is that intended to be clever, dear, or only rude?" Miss Kite requested
to be informed.
"Both," claimed Miss Devine.
"Myself? I must confess," shouted the tall young lady's father,
commonly called the Colonel, "I found him a fool."
"I noticed you seemed to be getting on very well together," purred his

wife, a plump, smiling little lady.
"Possibly we were," retorted the Colonel. "Fate has accustomed me to
the society of fools."
"Isn't it a pity to start quarrelling immediately after dinner, you two,"
suggested their thoughtful daughter from the sofa, "you'll have nothing
left to amuse you for the rest of the evening."
"He didn't strike me as a conversationalist," said the lady who was
cousin to a baronet; "but he did pass the vegetables before he helped
himself. A little thing like that shows breeding."
"Or that he didn't know you and thought maybe you'd leave him half a
spoonful," laughed Augustus the wit.
"What I can't make out about him--" shouted the Colonel.
The stranger entered the room.
The Colonel, securing the evening paper, retired into a corner. The
highly coloured Kite, reaching down from the mantelpiece a paper fan,
held it coyly before her face. Miss Devine sat upright on the horse-hair
sofa, and rearranged her skirts.
"Know anything?" demanded Augustus of the stranger, breaking the
somewhat remarkable silence.
The stranger evidently did not understand. It was necessary for
Augustus, the witty, to advance further into that odd silence.
"What's going to pull off the Lincoln handicap? Tell me, and I'll go out
straight and put my shirt upon it."
"I think you would act unwisely," smiled the stranger; "I am not an
authority upon the subject."
"Not! Why they told me you were Captain Spy of the _Sporting
Life_--in disguise."
It would have been difficult for a joke to fall more flat. Nobody
laughed, though why Mr. Augustus Longcord could not understand,
and maybe none of his audience could have told him, for at Forty-eight
Bloomsbury Square Mr. Augustus Longcord passed as a humorist. The
stranger himself appeared unaware that he was being made fun of.
"You have been misinformed," assured him the stranger.
"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Augustus Longcord.
"It is nothing," replied the stranger in his sweet low voice, and passed
on.
"Well what about this theatre," demanded Mr. Longcord of his friend

and partner; "do you want to go or don't you?" Mr. Longcord was
feeling irritable.
"Goth