Once he broke into a chuckle. "Isn't they
banging on the window, Lucy?" he said, but she was, it appeared, too
deeply engaged to answer him. He found that, in a moment of abstraction,
he had eaten the whole of the sponge cake, so that it was obvious that
the party was over. "Good-bye, Mrs. Smith. It was really nice of you to
come. Good-bye, dear, Mrs. ---- I think the wain almost isn't coming
now."
He said farewell to them all and climbed upon the window seat. Here,
gazing down into the Square, he saw that the rain was stopping, and, on
the farther side, above the roofs of the houses, a little splash of gold
had crept into the grey. He watched the gold, heard the rain coming more
slowly; at first, "spatter-spatter-spatter," then, "spatter--spatter."
Then one drop very slowly after another drop. Then he saw that the sun
from somewhere far away had found out the wet paths in the garden, and
was now stealing, very secretly, along them. Soon it would strike the
seat, and then the statue of the funny fat man in all his clothes, and
then, perhaps, the fountain. He was unhappy a little, and he did not
know why: he was conscious, perhaps, of the untidy, noisy room behind
him, of his sister Dorothy who, now a Squaw of a quite genuine and
realistic kind, was crying at the top of her voice: "I don't care.
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