"I'll allow you just five minutes to
get out of this room, before I kick you out, and if I kick you out of
the room, I'll kick you down the stairs, and if I kick you down the
stairs, I shall have got my blood comfortably warmed up and I'll kick
you down the street and round the block and down to Hoboken, because
you're going to take the steamer there and go back to the place you came
from, to the Slosh thing or whatever you call it. We haven't a damned
bit of use for you here.' And believe it or not, gentlemen----" looking
round with the wry-mouthed smile, "he took that passage and back he
went. And Lily's living with her mother and I mean to hold on to her."
Sir Nigel got up and left the club when the story was finished. He took
a long walk down Broadway, gnawing his lip and holding his head in the
air. He used blasphemous language at intervals in a low voice. Some of
it was addressed to his fate and some of it to the vulgar mercantile
coarseness and obtuseness of other people.
"They don't know what they are talking of," he said. "It is unheard of.
What do they expect? I never thought of this. Damn it! I'm like a rat in
a trap."
It was plain enough that he could not arrange his fortune as he had
anticipated when he decided to begin to make love to little pink and
white, doll-faced Rosy Vanderpoel.
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