Part 3
There presently came a phase in which she said: "I WON'T stand
it even now. I will go to-night."
She went as far as her door, then turned to the window. She
opened this and scrambled out--a thing she had not done for five
long years of adolescence--upon the leaded space above the
built-out bath-room on the first floor. Once upon a time she and
Roddy had descended thence by the drain-pipe.
But things that a girl of sixteen may do in short skirts are not
things to be done by a young lady of twenty-one in fancy dress
and an opera-cloak, and just as she was coming unaided to an
adequate realization of this, she discovered Mr. Pragmar, the
wholesale druggist, who lived three gardens away, and who had
been mowing his lawn to get an appetite for dinner, standing in a
fascinated attitude beside the forgotten lawn-mower and watching
her intently.
She found it extremely difficult to infuse an air of quiet
correctitude into her return through the window, and when she was
safely inside she waved clinched fists and executed a noiseless
dance of rage.
When she reflected that Mr. Pragmar probably knew Mr. Ramage, and
might describe the affair to him, she cried "Oh!" with renewed
vexation, and repeated some steps of her dance in a new and more
ecstatic measure.
