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The Real Adventure by Henry Kitchell Webster
page 25 of 717 (03%)
always younger than his years. What he said didn't matter, just a
cheerful greeting to the butler. But what they heard the butler say to
him was disconcerting.

"You're terribly wet, sir."

Frederica turned on her husband a look of despair.

"He didn't come in a taxi! He's walked or something, through that rain!
Do run down and see what he's like. And if he's very bad, send him up to
me. I can imagine how he'll look."

She was mistaken about that though. For once Frederica had overestimated
her powers, stimulated though they were by the way she heard her husband
say, "Good lord!" when the sight of his brother-in-law burst on him.

"Praise heaven you can wear my clothes," she heard him add. "Run along
up-stairs and break yourself gently to Freddy."

She heard him come squudging up the stairs and along the hall, and then
in her doorway she saw him. His baggy gray tweed suit was dark with the
water that saturated it. The lower part of his trousers-legs, in
irregular vertical creases, clung dismally to his ankles and toned down
almost indistinguishably into his once tan boots by the medium of a
liberal stipple of mud spatters. Evidently, he had worn no overcoat.
Both his side pockets had been, apparently, strained to the utmost to
accommodate what looked like a bunch of pasteboard-bound note-books,
now far on the way to their original pulp, and lopped despondently
outward. A melancholy pool had already begun forming about his feet.

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