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And the smell departed gradually from the region of Ranny's breast pocket, and he had peace in his pen. His fellow-clerks suspected him of a casual encounter and no more. A matter too trivial for remark. The counting-house at Woolridge's was an immense long room under the roof, lit by a row of windows on each side and a skylight in the middle.
Ranny's small affairs into systematic running order, and, under Miss Leaks's efficient instruction, was soon able slowly but accurately to hammer out the necessary letters on the typewriter. He was even able at times to help Mr. Chester, the melancholy bookkeeper whom the other clerks called "Fanny." Through working with figures all his life Mr. Chester had come to resemble one.
And nobody but Ranny ever came. Sometimes, of course, he took her to Earl's Court or the Coliseum; but going there with Ranny wasn't any fun. Ranny's idea of fun was not Earl's Court or the Coliseum; it was to mount a bicycle and ride from that lonely place, Acacia Avenue, into places that were more lonely still.
He may have got some of it from her, for she, poor thing, had sunk, adventurously, in one disastrous marriage her whole stock of youth and gaiety and charm. It was Ranny's youth and charm and gaiety that made him so surprising and so unaccountable. Circumstances were not encouraging to Ranny's youth, nor to his private and particular ambition, the cultivation of a superb physique.
Out of his seven years' weekly payments for board and lodging she had saved no less than a hundred pounds. Thus she had removed the one insurmountable obstacle from Ranny's path. It might have been better for Ranny if she hadn't. Because, on any scheme, on the lowest scale of expenditure, with the most dexterous manipulation of accounts, the house left him without a margin.
"Well you see how comical he is." "Yes. I see it." There was something about everything that was Ranny's, something that touched her, something that made her love it, because she loved him. Winny couldn't have burst out laughing in its face. "I'm glad I came," she said. "Because now I can see you." He misunderstood. "I hope you will, Winky very often." "I mean see you when you're not there."
For his bed had become odious to him, sinking under him, falling from him treacherously as he sank and fell, whereas Ranny's muscles adjusted themselves to all his sinkings and fallings. They remained and could be felt in the disintegration that presently separated them from the rest of Ranny, Ranny's arms being there, close under him, and Ranny's face a long way off at the other end of the room.
It took five minutes more to find Stanley's hat, the little soft hat of white felt, in which he was so adorable. They found it on Ranny's bed, and then they started. It was a great, an immense adventure, right away to the other side of London. "We'll take everything we can," said Ranny. And they did. The adventure began in the first lift. "Where we goin'?" the children cried.
They spent twenty minutes over that Prospectus, from which it appeared that the profit of the Estate Company, otherwise obscure, came from what the Agent called the "ramifications" of the scheme, from the miles and miles of houses they could afford to build. Whereas Ranny's profit was patent, it came in on the spot, and it would come in sooner, of course, if he could afford to purchase outright.
"We got to sell 'em the farm." "What farm? Papa Claude's? Whom are you going to sell it to?" Quin lifted a warning finger and nodded significantly at the back of Mr. Ranny's unsuspecting head. "Uncle Ranny?" Eleanor's lips formed the words incredulously.
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