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Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/72

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into the garden upon a bright March morning in search of an enfeebled English friend of his, was pleased to find him thus entertained by an attendant spinster.

"I mustn't interrupt you, Miss Orbison," the visitor said, as he seated himself upon a painted iron bench beside them. "Really, this is just what I persuaded your brother to come here for. It's gratifying to me to find that on your very first morning you've discovered the exactly proper thing to do. Won't you go on with the reading?"

The invalid protested. He was a long, eager-eyed, brown-haired man whose extreme thinness of body was perceptible even under the heavy rug that enveloped him to the waist. "No," he said. "My sister has had enough of reading this morning, and so have I. Ulysses has been dead a very long time and I have been nearly dead a longer, I think; I'd like to hear something of people who are more alive. Last evening after you brought us up from the station and got us installed in our cells, I contrived to hobble into the refectory for dinner and so had a view of our fellow guests in this extraordinary house of entertainment. It seemed to me I never saw a crew of cosmopolites more provocative to my curiosity. Can they actually