Paul Fordingbridge, with a faintly reproachful glance at his sister, interrupted his study of the financial page of The Times and put the paper down on his knee. Deliberately he removed his reading-glasses; replaced them by his ordinary spectacles; and then turned to the restless figure at the window of the private sitting-room.
“Well, Jay, you seem to have something on your mind. Would it be too much to ask you to say it—whatever it is—and then let me read my paper comfortably? One can’t give one’s mind to a thing when there’s a person at one’s elbow obviously ready to break out into conversation at any moment.”
Miss Fordingbridge had spent the best part of half a century in regretting her father’s admiration for Herrick. “I can’t see myself as Julia of the Night-piece, ” she complained with a faint parade of modesty; and it was at her own wish that the hated name had been abbreviated to an initial in family talk.