Phillips was
anxiously asking: "Was the room too warm? Could the wine have been too much
for him?" And out in the dining-room itself, one man said, "Heaven knows
just how they live;" and another, "Or what they eat, or don't eat;" and a
third, "Or just how hard these young beginners are driven."
"Ought he to go out to-night, Doctor?" asked Mrs. Phillips in a whisper,
appearing in the dining-room door.
"He might better stay if he can," replied the authority, who happened to be
at the nearer end of the table.
"Of course he can," she returned. Of course there was a room for him.
When the party finally reassembled in the drawing-room Cope had
disappeared. Mrs. Phillips could now enlarge on his attractiveness as a
singer, and could safely assure them--what she herself believed--that they
had lost a really charming experience. "If you could only have heard him
that Sunday!" she concluded.
Cope had said, of course, "I can get home perfectly well," and, "It's a
shame for me to be putting you out this way," and so on and on,--the things
you yourself would have said in the circumstances; but he said them with no
particular spirit, and was glad, as he walked uncertainly up stairs, that
he had not far to go.
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