e.

Left thus abruptly to himself, General Pendyce summoned a page, slowly
pencilled something on his card, and with his back to the only persons in
the hall, waited, his hands folded on the handle of his cane. And while
he waited he tried as far as possible to think of nothing. Having served
his country, his time now was nearly all devoted to waiting, and to think
fatigued and made him feel discontented, for he had had sunstroke once,
and fever several times. In the perfect precision of his collar, his
boots, his dress, his figure; in the way from time to time he cleared his
throat, in the strange yellow driedness of his face between his carefully
brushed whiskers, in the immobility of his white hands on his cane, he
gave the impression of a man sucked dry by a system. Only his eyes,
restless and opinionated, betrayed the essential Pendyce that was behind.

He went up to the ladies' drawing-room, clutching that telegram. It
worried him. There was something odd about it, and he was not accustomed
to pay calls in the morning. He found his sister-in-law seated at an
open window, her face unusually pink, her eyes rather defiantly bright.
She greeted him gently, and General Pendyce was not the man to discern
what was not put under his nose. Fortunately for him, that had never
been his practice.

"How are you, Margery?" he said. "Glad to see you in town. How's
Horace? Look here what he's sent me!" He offered her the telegram, with
the air of slightly avenging an offence; then added in surprise, as
though he had lust thought of it: "Is there anything I can do for you?"

Mrs. Pendyce read the telegram, and she, too, like George, felt sorry for
the sender.

"Nothing, thanks, dear Charles," she said slowly. "I'm all right. Horace
gets so nervous!"

General Pendyce looked at her; for a moment his eyes flickered, then,
since the truth was so improbable and so utterly in any case beyond his
philosophy, he accepted her statement.

"He shouldn't go sending telegrams like this," he said. "You might have
been ill for all I could tell. It spoiled my breakfast!" For though, as
a fact, it had not prevented his completing a hearty meal, he fancied
that he felt hungry. "When I was quartered at Halifax there was a fellow
who never sent anything but telegrams. Telegraph Jo they called him. He
commanded the old Bluebottles. You know the old Bluebottles? If Horace
is going to take to this sort of thing he'd better see