He
was conscious all the time of a dream-like feeling, as if he were
watching himself from somewhere outside himself. From some
conning-tower in this fourth dimension he perceived himself eating
broiled lobster and drinking champagne and heard himself bearing
an adequate part in the conversation; but his movements were
largely automatic.
Time passed. It seemed to Lord Dawlish, watching from without,
that things were livening up. He seemed to perceive a quickening
of the _tempo_ of the revels, an added abandon. Nutty was
getting quite bright. He had the air of one who recalls the good
old days, of one who in familiar scenes re-enacts the joys of his
vanished youth. The chastened melancholy induced by many months of
fetching of pails of water, of scrubbing floors with a mop, and of
jumping like a firecracker to avoid excited bees had been purged
from him by the lights and the music and the wine. He was telling
a long anecdote, laughing at it, throwing a crust of bread at an
adjacent waiter, and refilling his glass at the same time. It is
not easy to do all these things simultaneously, and the fact that
Nutty did them with notable success was proof that he was picking
up.
Miss Daisy Leonard was still demure, but as she had just slipped a
piece of ice down the back of Nutty's neck one may assume that she
was feeling at her ease and had overcome any diffidence or shyness
which might have interfered with her complete enjoyment of the
festivities.
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80