I want to think
it over." So saying, he turned back, and sat down on a seat that faced
the sun.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PERFECT DOG
Hilary sat long in the sun, watching the pale bright waters and many
well-bred ducks circling about the shrubs, searching with their round,
bright eyes for worms. Between the bench where he was sitting and the
spiked iron railings people passed continually--men, women, children
of all kinds. Every now and then a duck would stop and cast her knowing
glance at these creatures, as though comparing the condition of their
forms and plumage with her own. 'If I had had the breeding of you,'
she seemed to say, 'I could have made a better fist of it than that. A
worse-looking lot of ducks, take you all round. I never wish to see!'
And with a quick but heavy movement of her shoulders, she would turn
away and join her fellows.
Hilary, however, got small distraction from the ducks. The situation
gradually developing was something of a dilemma to a man better
acquainted with ideas than facts, with the trimming of words than with
the shaping of events. He turned a queer, perplexed, almost quizzical
eye on it. Stephen had irritated him profoundly. He had such a way
of pettifying things! Yet, in truth, the affair would seem ridiculous
enough to an ordinary observer.
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