But though the young man's manner grew easy, after his report of this
brief dialogue the hôtel's manner grew stiff, for on the slip of paper
presented to Ingram to be filled in with his name he had, unaware of the
things Ingeborg was saying, described himself and her as Mr. and Mrs.
Dobson, and the hôtel, in which English Church services were held, and
which was at that moment, though the season was over, being stayed in by
several representative English spinsters, and a clergyman also from
England with a wife and grown-up daughters, most respectable nice ladies
who all took him out every day twice, once after breakfast and once
after tea, for a little walk--the hôtel decided, putting its heads
together in the manager's office, that it would, using tact, encourage
the Dobsons to depart.
It could do nothing, however, for the moment, for the lady had
disappeared with an umbrella into the wet, and the gentleman, it could
hear, was sleeping; and this condition of things continued for many
hours, the lady not coming into luncheon but remaining in the wet, and
the gentleman, it could hear, going on sleeping. Then it became aware
that they were both having tea in a distant corner of the slippery
windowed wilderness of bamboo chairs and tables described in its
prospectus as the Handsome Palmy Lounge, and that they had drawn up a
second table to the one their tea was on and piled it with undesirably
dripping branches of the yellow broom that grew high up in the hills,
and that they were being noticed with suspicion by the hôtel's authentic
guests who were used to having their tea in the silent stupor of the
really married, because the gentleman, contrary to the observed habits
of genuine husbands, was talking to the lady instead of reading the
_Daily Mail_.
The hôtel was nothing if not competent. It could handle any sort of
situation competently, from runaway couples to that most unpleasant form
of guest of all, the kind that came alive and went away dead. Full of
tact, it allowed the lady and gentleman to finish their tea undisturbed;
then it sent some one sleek to inform them that, most unfortunately,
their rooms had been engaged for weeks beforehand for that very night,
and therefore--
But before this person could even begin to be competent the gentleman
requested him to have a carriage round in half an hour as he intended
going on that evening; and thus the parting was accomplished, as all
partings should be, urbanely, and the manager was able to display his
doorstep suavity and bow and wish them a pleasant journey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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