George and
wholly as if he were doing something rather fine and perilous, he should
feel quite so much like a gauche seventeen-year-old now. He thought that
he would not enjoy playing chess with Mrs. Severance. She was one of those
people who smiled inoffensively at the end of a game and then said they
thought it would really be a little evener if they gave you both knights.
Ted reassured him though. Ted, stumbling out of the dining-room, with a
mixture of would-be unconcern, compound embarrassment and complete though
suppressed fury at Oliver on his face. It was hardly either just or moral,
Oliver reflected, that Mrs. Severance should be the only one of them to
seem completely at her ease.
"Hello, Ollie," in the tone of "And if you'd only get the hell out as
quickly as possible." "Mrs. Severance--" a stumble over that. "You've got a
letter for me?"
"Yes. It's important," said Oliver as firmly as he could. He gave it, and,
as Ted sat down near a lamp to read it, Oliver saw by one sudden momentary
flash that passed over Mrs. Severance's face that she had seen the address
and known instantly that the handwriting was not that of a man.
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