As for the Good Sport, she was larger, blonder, and
more exuberant than ever and she was addressing someone as 'Bill'.
Perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon of the evening, as it
advanced, was the change it wrought in Lord Dawlish's attitude
toward this same Good Sport. He was not conscious of the beginning
of the change; he awoke to the realization of it suddenly. At the
beginning of supper his views on her had been definite and clear.
When they had first been introduced to each other he had had a
stunned feeling that this sort of thing ought not to be allowed at
large, and his battered brain had instinctively recalled that line
of Tennyson: 'The curse is come upon me.' But now, warmed with
food and drink and smoking an excellent cigar, he found that a
gentler, more charitable mood had descended upon him.
He argued with himself in extenuation of the girl's peculiar
idiosyncrasies. Was it, he asked himself, altogether her fault
that she was so massive and spoke as if she were addressing an
open-air meeting in a strong gale? Perhaps it was hereditary.
Perhaps her father had been a circus giant and her mother the
strong woman of the troupe. And for the unrestraint of her manner
defective training in early girlhood would account. He began to
regard her with a quiet, kindly commiseration, which in its turn
changed into a sort of brotherly affection.
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