However,
our principal character figured about quite happily in old
corners of Guildford, and once the other man in brown, looking
out of the bay window of the Earl of Kent, saw him standing in a
corner by a gateway, note-book in hand, busily sketching the
Earl's imposing features. At which sight the other man in brown
started back from the centre of the window, so as to be hidden
from him, and crouching slightly, watched him intently through
the interstices of the lace curtains.
OMISSIONS
XI
Now the rest of the acts of Mr. Hoopdriver in Guildford, on the
great opening day of his holidays, are not to be detailed here.
How he wandered about the old town in the dusk, and up to the
Hogsback to see the little lamps below and the little stars above
come out one after another; how he returned through the
yellow-lit streets to the Yellow Hammer Coffee Tavern and supped
bravely in the commercial room--a Man among Men; how he joined in
the talk about flying-machines and the possibilities of
electricity, witnessing that fiying-machines were "dead certain
to come," and that electricity was "wonderful, wonderful"; how he
went and watched the billiard playing and said, "Left 'em"
several times with an oracular air; how he fell a-yawning; and
how he got out his cycling map and studied it intently,--are
things that find no mention here. Nor will I enlarge upon his
going into the writing-room, and marking the road from London to
Guildford with a fine, bright line of the reddest of red ink.
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