"There I shall remain."
"Don't make a row with him," said Dangle.
And Mr. Hoopdriver retired, unassaulted, in almost sobbing
dignity.
XXXIX
So here is the world with us again, and our sentimental excursion
is over. In the front of the Rufus Stone Hotel conceive a
remarkable collection of wheeled instruments, watched over by
Dangle and Phipps in grave and stately attitudes, and by the
driver of a stylish dogcart from Ringwood. In the garden behind,
in an attitude of nervous prostration, Mr. Hoopdriver was seated
on a rustic seat. Through the open window of a private
sitting-room came a murmur of voices, as of men and women in
conference. Occasionally something that might have been a girlish
sob.
"I fail to see what status Widgery has," says Dangle, "thrusting
himself in there."
"He takes too much upon himself," said Phipps.
"I've been noticing little things, yesterday and to-day," said
Dangle, and stopped.
"They went to the cathedral together in the afternoon."
"Financially it would be a good thing for her, of course," said
Dangle, with a gloomy magnanimity.
He felt drawn to Phipps now by the common trouble, in spite of
the man's chequered legs. "Financially it wouldn't be half bad."
"He's so dull and heavy," said Phipps.
Meanwhile, within, the clergyman had, by promptitude and
dexterity, taken the chair and was opening the case against the
unfortunate Jessie. I regret to have to say that my heroine had
been appalled by the visible array of public opinion against her
excursion, to the pitch of tears.
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