ourse make me feel sometimes very young and
sometimes very old, caring himself but little which. He mentioned, as if
to show our companion that he might safely be left to his own devices,
that he had once started from London to Bombay at three quarters of an
hour's notice.

"Yes, and it must have been pleasant for the people you were with!"

"Oh the people I was with--!" he returned; and his tone appeared to
signify that such people would always have to come off as they could. He
asked if there were no cold drinks in the house, no lemonade, no iced
syrups; in such weather something of that sort ought always to be kept
going. When his mother remarked that surely at the club they _were_ kept
going he went on: "Oh yes, I had various things there; but you know I've
walked down the hill since. One should have something at either end. May
I ring and see?" He rang while Mrs. Nettlepoint observed that with the
people they had in the house, an establishment reduced naturally at such
a moment to its simplest expression--they were burning up candle-ends and
there were no luxuries--she wouldn't answer for the service. The matter
ended in her leaving the room in quest of cordials with the female
domestic who had arrived in response to the bell and in whom Jasper's
appeal aroused no visible intelligence.

She remained away some time and I talked with her son, who was sociable
but desultory and kept moving over the place, always with his fan, as if
he were properly impatient. Sometimes he seated himself an instant on
the window-sill, and then I made him out in fact thoroughly
good-looking--a fine brown clean young athlete. He failed to tell me on
what special contingency his decision depended; he only alluded
familiarly to an expected telegram, and I saw he was probably fond at no
time of the trouble of explanations. His mother's absence was a sign
that when it might be a question of gratifying him she had grown used to
spare no pains, and I fancied her rummaging in some close storeroom,
among old preserve-pots, while the dull maid-servant held the candle
awry. I don't know whether this same vision was in his own eyes; at all
events it didn't prevent his saying suddenly, as he looked at his watch,
that I must excuse him--he should have to go back to the club. He would
return in half an hour--or in less. He walked away and I sat there
alone, conscious, on the dark dismantled simplified scene, in the deep
silence that res