To do Mrs. MacAnder justice, she had been to Switzerland and the Italian
lakes with a party of three, and had not heard of Soames' rupture with
his architect. She could not tell, therefore, the profound impression
her words would make.
Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small, shrewd eyes from face
to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words. On either side of her
a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face turned towards his plate,
ate his mutton steadily.
These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable that
they were known as the Dromios. They never talked, and seemed always
completely occupied in doing nothing. It was popularly supposed that
they were cramming for an important examination. They walked without
hats for long hours in the Gardens attached to their house, books in
their hands, a fox-terrier at their heels, never saying a word, and
smoking all the time. Every morning, about fifty yards apart, they
trotted down Campden Hill on two lean hacks, with legs as long as their
own, and every morning about an hour later, still fifty yards apart,
they cantered up again. Every evening, wherever they had dined, they
might be observed about half-past ten, leaning over the balustrade of
the Alhambra promenade.
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