The Market-Place by Harold Frederic

Author:Harold Frederic [Frederic, Harold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Klassiker
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2017-06-22T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter XV

"We've got a spare room here, haven't we?" Thorpe asked his niece, when she came out to greet him in the hall of their new home in Ovington Square. He spoke with palpable eagerness before even unbuttoning his damp great-coat, or putting off his hat. "I mean it's all in working order ready for use?"

"Why yes, uncle," Julia answered, after a moment's thought. "Is someone coming?"

"I think so," he replied, with a grunt of relief. He seemed increasingly pleased with the project he had in mind, as she helped him off with his things. The smile he gave her, when she playfully took his arm to lead him into the adjoining library, was clearly but a part of the satisfied grin with which he was considering some development in his own affairs.

He got into his slippers and into the easy-chair before the bright fire and lit a cigar with a contented air.

"Well, my little girl?" he said, with genial inconsequence, and smiled again at her, where she stood beside the mantel.

"It will be such a lark to play the hostess to a stranger!" she exclaimed. "When is he coming?—I suppose it is a 'he,'" she added, less buoyantly.

"Oh—that fellow," Thorpe said, as if he had been thinking of something else. "Well—I can't tell just when he will turn up. I only learned he was in town—or in England—a couple of hours ago. I haven't seen him yet at all. I drove round to his lodgings, near the British Museum, but he wasn't there. He only comes there to sleep, but they told me he turned in early—by nine o'clock or so. Then I went round to a hotel and wrote a note for him, and took it back to his lodgings, and left it for him. I told him to pack up his things as soon as he got it, and drive here, and make this his home—for the time being at least."

"Then it's some old friend of yours?" said the girl. "I know I shall like him."

Thorpe laughed somewhat uneasily. "Well—yes—he's a kind of a friend of mine," he said, with a note of hesitation in his voice. "I don't know, though, that you'll think much of him. He aint what you'd call a ladies' man."

He laughed again at some thought the words conjured up. "He's a curious, simple old party, who'd just like a comfortable corner somewhere by himself, and wouldn't expect to be talked to or entertained at all. If he does come, he'll keep to himself pretty well. He wouldn't be any company for you. I mean,—for you or Alfred either. I think he's a Canadian or West Indian,—British subject, at all events,—but he's lived all his life in the West, and he wouldn't know what to do in a drawing-room, or that sort of thing. You'd better just not pay any attention to him. Pass the time of day, of course, but that's all."

Julia's alert, small-featured face expressed some vague disappointment at what she heard, but her words were cheerful enough.

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