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He had controverted the report by growling, "Folks that think a jail ought to be a bloomin' Hotel Thornleigh make me sick. If people don't like a jail, let 'em behave 'emselves and keep out of it. Besides, these reform cranks always exaggerate."
"Naw," said Miss Heptonstall, "I wouldn't go as far as that; I like a glass o' beer mysel' at dinner-time I allus keep a little cask i' th' buttery yon but you'll ha' to gi' o'er callin' at th' Thornleigh Arms." "Tisn't like I'd want to be callin' at th' Thornleigh Arms if I'd a coomfortable place like this to set in o' neets, and a missus o' my own to look to."
Angus Egerton had received his first lessons in the classics from the kind old Rector, and had been almost a son of the house in the past, the girls told me. He had resumed his old place upon his return, and seemed really fond of these friends, whom he had found ready to welcome him warmly in spite of all rumours to his disadvantage that had floated to Thornleigh during the years of his absence.
But when he met her, on a corner two blocks from the Hotel Thornleigh, she said, "A taxi? Why, I thought you owned a car!" "I do. Of course I do! But it's out of commission to-night." "Oh," she remarked, as one who had heard that tale before. All the way out to Biddlemeier's Inn he tried to talk as an old friend, but he could not pierce the wall of her words.
He thought of the prettiest of the manicure girls at the Hotel Thornleigh barber shop. As he fell asleep on the davenport he felt that he had found something in life, and that he had made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal.
All through the meal Gunch watched them, while Babbitt watched himself being watched and lugubriously tried to keep from spoiling Tanis's gaiety. "I felt like a spree to-day," she rippled. "I love the Thornleigh, don't you? It's so live and yet so so refined." He made talk about the Thornleigh, the service, the food, the people he recognized in the restaurant, all but Vergil Gunch.
On the following afternoon, just at the time when young Thornleigh went a-coortin', and elderly Thornleigh took off its boots and coat, or put a clean white handkerchief over its cap, the better to enjoy its Sabbath snooze in the ingle-nook, Ted Wharton cocked his hat over his eye, put a posy in his coat, and set off to call on Margaret Heptonstall.
Perhaps two days afterward Babbitt took Tanis to lunch at the Hotel Thornleigh. She who had seemed well content to wait for him at her flat had begun to hint with melancholy smiles that he must think but little of her if he never introduced her to his friends, if he was unwilling to be seen with her except at the movies.
The Thornleigh Arms was a snug old-fashioned hostelry standing a little back from the high-road.
Darrell's return he came to Thornleigh, looking more careworn than ever. I pitied him a little, knowing the state of his feelings about Milly, believing indeed that he loved her with a rare intensity, and being inclined to attribute the change in him to his disappointment upon this subject.
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