Paul Fordingbridge, with a faintly reproachful glance at his sister, interrupted his study of the financial page ofThe Times and put the paper down on his knee. Deliberately he removed his reading-glasses; replaced them by his ordinary spectacles; and then turned to the restless figure at the window of the private sitting-room.
“Well, Jay, you seem to have something on your mind. Would it be too much to ask you to say it—whatever it is—and then let me read my paper comfortably? One can't give one's mind to a thing when there's a person at one's elbow obviously ready to break out into conversation at any moment.”
Miss Fordingbridge had spent the best part of half a century in regretting her father's admiration for Herrick. “I can't see myself as Julia of the Night-piece,” she complained with a faint parade of modesty; and it was at her own wish that the hated name had been abbreviated to an initial in family talk.
At the sound of her brother's voice she turned away from the sea-view.
“I can't imagine why you insisted on coming to this hotel,” she said, rather fretfully. “I can't stand the place. Of course, as it's just been opened, it's useless to expect everything to go like clockwork; but there seems a lot of mismanagement about it. I almost burned my hand with the hot water in my bedroom this morning—ridiculous, having tap-water as hot as that! And my letters got into the wrong pigeon-hole or something; I had to wait ever so long for them. Of course the clerk said he was sorry—but what good does that do? I don't want his sorrow. I want my letters when I ask for them.”
