"Between you and me and the
lamp-post, Jule," he said, with a slow, whimsical drawl,
"there isn't a fellow in the world that I wanted to see
less than I did him. But since he's here--why, we've got
to make the best of it."
After dinner, Thorpe suffered the youngsters to go
up to the drawing-room in the tacit understanding
that he should probably not see them again that night.
He betook himself then once more to the library, as it was
called--the little, cozy, dark-panelled room off the hall,
where the owner of the house had left two locked bookcases,
and where Thorpe himself had installed a writing-desk
and a diminutive safe for his papers. The chief purpose
of the small apartment, however, was indicated by the
two big, round, low-seated easy-chairs before the hearth,
and by the cigar boxes and spirit-stand and tumblers
visible behind the glass of the cabinet against the wall.
Thorpe himself called the room his "snuggery," and spent
many hours there in slippered comfort, smoking and gazing
contentedly into the fire. Sometimes Julia read to him,
as he sat thus at his ease, but then he almost invariably
went to sleep.
Now, when he had poured out some whiskey and water and lit
a cigar, the lounging chairs somehow did not attract him.
He moved about aimlessly in the circumscribed space,
his hands in his pockets, his burly shoulders rounded,
his face dulled and heavy as with a depression of doubt.
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