51
und you so quick, sir. Shall I tell them to send it along? You won't want to carry it."
"I'll see to that," said I, taking it out of his hand. "Why didn't it blow off your canopy?"
"The spare cover was 'oldin' it, sir. Must 'ave shifted on to the brim as soon as it come there. I don't know 'ow long----"
"Best part of an hour," I said shortly, giving him a two-shilling piece. "Good day, and thanks very much."
He touched his cap and withdrew.
A wrestle with mental arithmetic showed me that the draught which I had encountered nearly an hour before had cost me exactly one and a half guineas.
Ordinarily I should have dismissed the matter from my mind, but for some reason I had no sooner let the chauffeur go than I was tormented by a persistent curiosity regarding the identity of his considerate mistress. If I had not promised to rejoin Berry for lunch--a meal for which I was already half an hour late--I should have gone to the Berkeley and scrutinized the guests. The reflection that such a proceeding must only have been unprofitable consoled me not at all, so contrary a maid is Speculation. For the next two hours Vexation rode me on the curb. I quarrelled with Berry, I was annoyed with myself, and when the hall-porter at the Club casually observed that there was "a nasty wind," I agreed with such hearty and unexpected bitterness that he started violently and dropped the pile of letters which he was searching on my behalf.
A visit to Lincoln's Inn Fields, however, with regard to an estate of which I was a trustee, followed by a sharp walk in the Park, did much to reduce the ridiculous fever of which my folly lay sick, and I returned home in a frame of mind almost as comfortable as that in which I had set out.
It was half-past four, but no one of the others was in, so I ordered tea to be brought to the library, and settled down to the composition of a letter to The Observer.
I was in the act of recasting my second sentence, when the light went out.<