We all spent during this episode, for people of our
means, a great deal of money in telegrams and cabs, and I counted
on the receipt of news from Rapallo immediately after the junction
of the discoverer with the discovered. The interval seemed an age,
but late one day I heard a hansom precipitated to my door with the
crash engendered by a hint of liberality. I lived with my heart in
my mouth and accordingly bounded to the window--a movement which
gave me a view of a young lady erect on the footboard of the
vehicle and eagerly looking up at my house. At sight of me she
flourished a paper with a movement that brought me straight down,
the movement with which, in melodramas, handkerchiefs and reprieves
are flourished at the foot of the scaffold.
"Just seen Vereker--not a note wrong. Pressed me to bosom--keeps
me a month." So much I read on her paper while the cabby dropped a
grin from his perch. In my excitement I paid him profusely and in
hers she suffered it; then as he drove away we started to walk
about and talk. We had talked, heaven knows, enough before, but
this was a wondrous lift. We pictured the whole scene at Rapallo,
where he would have written, mentioning my name, for permission to
call; that is _I_ pictured it, having more material than my
companion, whom I felt hang on my lips as we stopped on purpose
before shop-windows we didn't look into.
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