In a little while they
will be upon us. You must imagine as you best can the competitive
raidings at Midhurst of Widgery, Dangle, and Phipps. How Widgery
was great at questions, and Dangle good at inference, and Phipps
so conspicuously inferior in everything that he felt it, and
sulked with Mrs. Milton most of the day, after the manner of your
callow youth the whole world over. Mrs. Milton stopped at the
Angel and was very sad and charming and intelligent, and Widgery
paid the bill. in the afternoon of Saturday, Chichester was
attained. But by that time our fugitives--As you shall
immediately hear.
THE AWAKENING OF MR. HOOPDRIVER
XXVII
Mr. Hoopdriver stirred on his pillow, opened his eyes, and,
staring unmeaningly, yawned. The bedclothes were soft and
pleasant. He turned the peaked nose that overrides the
insufficient moustache, up to the ceiling, a pinkish projection
over the billow of white. You might see it wrinkle as he yawned
again, and then became quiet. So matters remained for a space.
Very slowly recollection returned to him. Then a shock of
indeterminate brown hair appeared, and first one watery grey eye
a-wondering, and then two ; the bed upheaved, and you had him,
his thin neck projecting abruptly from the clothes he held about
him, his face staring about the room. He held the clothes about
him, I hope I may explain, because his night-shirt was at Bognor
in an American-cloth packet, derelict. He yawned a third time,
rubbed his eyes, smacked his lips.
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