The Thousandth Woman

ke any plans at all for the next few days; also, he seemed in two minds now about a Jermyn Street hotel previously mentioned as his immediate destination; and his

newest of new taxicabs, all worked together and so swiftly upon Cazalet's organism that he had a little colloquy with his smart young driver instead of paying

the train, my good fel

without dipping his cigarette, "if yo

the old country. But he had come from the bush, and he felt as though he might have been back there but for th

k some time before midnight; that was his card, they could enter his name for themselves. He departed, pipe in mouth, open kn

us figure on the flags of Kensington Gore; no, now it was the crowded High Street, and now it was humble Hammersmith. He had told his smart young man to be sure and go that way. He had been at St. Paul's school as a boy-with old Venus Potts-and he wanted to see as many landmarks as he could. This one towered and was

nc

e this; at the time he did not realize that it had. That was the beauty of his bout. He knew well enough what he was doing and seeing, but inwardly he was literally bl

ow cool in the shadows, how warm in the sun; what a sparkling old river it was, to be

ent he was out on Barnes' Common. Then, in the Lower Richmond Road, the smart young man began to change speed and crawl, and at once there was something fresh to think about. The Venture and its team of grays, Oxford and London, was trying to pass a motor-bus just ahead, and a gr

ly familiar scenes. But nothing was lost on Cazalet that great morning; even a milk-float entranced him, itself enchanted, with its tall can turned to gold and silver in the sun.

n (that he could not see) leading down to the river, and the stables (that he could) across the road-all that was past and gone in a veritable twinkling. And though he turned round and looked back,

th and blatant semi-gentility; on the left good grounds, shaded by cedar and chestnut, and on the right a row o

d Cazalet. "It can't be he

bringing her down the silly little path to the wicket-gate with the idiotic name; there was no time to op

anc

we

rather dubious token of pristine proclivities. But out both came as if they were children sti

hirty-three, with a note not entirely tactful in

t altered enough. Sweep, I'm disapp

explained, "before the end of the voyage. I wasn't g

ou! I call

ain at the sight of his clutched wide-awake

f you saw where they came from: a regular roadside shanty in a forsaken township at the back of beyond. Extraordinary cove, th

your taxi ticking up twopence every quarter of an hour, and I c

s came out and mobbed him for a millionaire. And he followed her indoors and up-stairs, into a little new den crowded with some of the big old things he could remember in a very different setting. But if the room

you are. It's just big enough for Martha and me; you remember old Martha, don't you?

threatened to take the beastly thing away, and Blanche had told him he had better not. But it did not occur to Cazalet that it was the photograph to which Hilton Toye had referred

to be transplanted at my age. Here one has everybody one ever knew, except those who escape by emigrating, simply at one's mercy on a bicycle. There's more golf

," said Cazalet. "Tha

value every day like all the other property about here, except this sort. Mind where you throw

like the rest of the ridiculous little garden in front, was obscured if not o

shut. They used to smell like a stable, and now they smell like a lamp. And I used to think the old cabbies could drive, but their job was child's play to the taximan's! We were at Hammersmith before I could light my pipe, and almost down he

Indeed, he was simply coming down again, for her benefit and his own, witho

neral here. I s

. I

astic solemnity that would have made her shriek if she

who can ha

nd they don't look m

enemies!" Cazalet kept silence; but she thought he winced. "Of course it must have been the m

n movements of the Kaiser Fritz, when at the first

an to say you came b

d I waste a week? Besides, you can generally

h," said Blanche. "Well, I call it most unpatriotic;

l the way; there was another fellow in with me from Genoa;

n it ha

name was. H

ne both strained and cordial. "He's great fun, Mr. Toye, with his del

if it was nothing else. Of course it was nothing else, to his immediate knowledge; still, he was rather ready to think that Blanche was blushing, but forgot, if indeed he had been in a fit state to see it at the time

e inquired, with the suitable admi

t instance,

rg! Wher

rland where everybody goes nowadays

eographical point and another of general information. A close observer might have t

id Cazalet, but rather as though

to an annual letter. It was the winter befor

t he took a pl

summer, and found he'd got rooms in one of the

s

s standing up and gazing out of the balcony into the belt of singing sunshi

rnoon of it?" she said. "But you simply must see Martha first; and while she's making herself fit t

te, was simply dying to make herself more presentable. Yet when she had done so, and came back like snow, in a shirt and skirt just home from the laundry, she saw that he did not see the diffe

me to nursery tea at Littleford. She declared she would have known him anywhere

oking him in the lower temperate zone. "But

azalet. "You said she'd be disappoi

n running out of the drive, at your old home, he had a beard! It's in all the notices a

she was really not such a great age as she pretended,

all it rather lucky f

that had been said about Henry Craven by the Cazalets' fri