"Oh, what a cad!" said Mr. Mudge.




CHAPTER XX


It was not till the end of October that she saw Captain Everard again,
and on that occasion--the only one of all the series on which hindrance
had been so utter--no communication with him proved possible. She had
made out even from the cage that it was a charming golden day: a patch of
hazy autumn sunlight lay across the sanded floor and also, higher up,
quickened into brightness a row of ruddy bottled syrups. Work was slack
and the place in general empty; the town, as they said in the cage, had
not waked up, and the feeling of the day likened itself to something than
in happier conditions she would have thought of romantically as Saint
Martin's summer. The counter-clerk had gone to his dinner; she herself
was busy with arrears of postal jobs, in the midst of which she became
aware that Captain Everard had apparently been in the shop a minute and
that Mr. Buckton had already seized him.

He had as usual half a dozen telegrams; and when he saw that she saw him
and their eyes met he gave, on bowing to her, an exaggerated laugh in
which she read a new consciousness. It was a confession of awkwardness;
it seemed to tell her that of course he knew he ought better to have kept
his head, ought to have been clever enough to wait, on some pretext, till
he should have found her free. Mr. Buckton was a long time with him, and
her attention was soon demanded by other visitors; so that nothing passed