Anyhow she was not in sight. He got off unsteadily, and for a
moment his legs felt like wisps of cotton. He balanced his
machine against the grassy edge of the path and sat down panting.
His hands were gnarled with swollen veins and shaking palpably,
his breath came viscid.
"I'm hardly in training yet," he remarked. His legs had gone
leaden. "I don't feel as though I'd had a mouthful of breakfast."
Presently he slapped his side pocket and produced therefrom a
brand-new cigarette case and a packet of Vansittart's Red Herring
cigarettes. He filled the case. Then his eye fell with a sudden
approval on the ornamental chequering of his new stockings. The
expression in his eyes faded slowly to abstract meditation.
"She WAS a stunning girl," he said. "I wonder if I shall ever set
eyes on her again. And she knew how to ride, too! Wonder what she
thought of me."
The phrase 'bloomin' Dook' floated into his mind with a certain
flavour of comfort.
He lit a cigarette, and sat smoking and meditating. He did not
even look up when vehicles passed. It was perhaps ten minutes
before he roused himself. "What rot it is! What's the good of
thinking such things," he said. "I'm only a blessed draper's
assistant." (To be exact, he did not say blessed. The service of
a shop may polish a man's exterior ways, but the 'prentices'
dormitory is an indifferent school for either manners or morals.)
He stood up and began wheeling his machine towards Esher. It was
going to be a beautiful day, and the hedges and trees and the
open country were all glorious to his town-tired eyes. But it was
a little different from the elation of his start.
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