f attending to him with a small portion of her mind
only, if that, did not baulk him; it pricked him to renewed effort. The
element of deliberateness in it passed, as so much passed, over his
head.

But he partially caught it--he hardly could have missed it--on one
occasion. That was on the first day of March. The steady strokes of the
rain lashed the city, beginning with swift unexpectedness; the
Crevequers, coming home from lunch, found Prudence Varley and Miranda at
their door, delivering a note. They both looked very wet. The
Crevequers, mournfully looking from under their large and disreputable
umbrella--of all things they hated rain--felt an immense pity, a pity
that would have seemed to Prudence disproportionate; she was used to
present to the elements a tranquil inattention, and rather liked rain
than not. Miranda, too, was of hard fibre; both, anyhow, were used to
England. The Crevequers, from under the umbrella (they more than ever
resembled Tweedledum and Tweedledee) said (in turns):

'Come up with us till it stops'--'You mustn't get any wetter just
now'--'Or you'll be too wet'--'The only safe way is to get dry'--'In
between'--'At the stove'--'We're so dull'--'We've no one to talk to; do
come'--'Oh, but do'--'Well, anyhow, take the umbrella'--'We shan't want
it; we never go out in the wet'--'We should hate to.'

The entirety of the failure of it all had pathos. Significance seemed to
be suddenly brought by that failure into the fact that while three
members of the Venables family had long been familiar with the room at
the top of the pinkish house, the fourth had never set foot on the
lowest of the stone stairs.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee went up to their room in silence.

It was then that the room seemed newly to become an impression to them;
it was as if it had broken through barriers and suddenly pierced their
senses. Their melancholy eyes took it in--a certain tawdriness it had,
the litter of things incongruous: on the table a scattered pack of dingy
cards; bottles and glasses, unwashed from last night, making red sticky
circles on _Marchese Peppino_; everywhere was _Marchese Peppino_: one
could not escape from it. From the half-painted, absurd ceiling to the
stone floor stale air brooded, breathing of smoke and wine.

Betty thought suddenly of cold, rarefied air, with a faint smell of
paint, and winter sunshine striking in through open windows.

Tommy said an odd thing, a thing it is possible he h