"In the drawing-room, sir? Mrs. Weeks Wimbush."

"And in the dining-room?"

"A young lady, sir--waiting: I think a foreigner."

It was three o'clock, and on days when Paraday didn't lunch out he
attached a value to these appropriated hours. On which days,
however, didn't the dear man lunch out? Mrs. Wimbush, at such a
crisis, would have rushed round immediately after her own repast.
I went into the dining-room first, postponing the pleasure of
seeing how, upstairs, the lady of the barouche would, on my
arrival, point the moral of my sweet solicitude. No one took such
an interest as herself in his doing only what was good for him, and
she was always on the spot to see that he did it. She made
appointments with him to discuss the best means of economising his
time and protecting his privacy. She further made his health her
special business, and had so much sympathy with my own zeal for it
that she was the author of pleasing fictions on the subject of what
my devotion had led me to give up. I gave up nothing (I don't
count Mr. Pinhorn) because I had nothing, and all I had as yet
achieved was to find myself also in the menagerie. I had dashed in
to save my friend, but I had only got domesticated and wedged; so
that I could do little more for him than exchange with him over
people's heads looks of intense but futile intelligence.



CHAPTER VII.