Apart, and judged on their natural merits, I took Jack for a good stolid fellow, innately and a little aggravatingly virtuous, and perhaps a trifle more just than generous.

Jenny, I felt, had the spurious brilliancy of that division of her sex that claims as intuition an inability to master the processes of thought, and attributes to this faculty all fortunate conclusions, but none that is faulty.  I thought, with some commiseration for him, that at bottom her manner showed some real leaning towards the lover she had discarded—­that she felt the need of a pincushion, as it were, into which to stick the little points of her malevolence.  I think I was inclined to be hard on her.  I have felt the same antagonism many times towards beauty that was unattainable by me.  For she was richly pretty, without doubt.

When in the neighbourhood of one another, however, they were wont to assume an elaborate artificiality of speech and manner in communion with their friends, that was designed with each to point the moral of a complete indifference and forgetfulness.  But the girl was by far the better actor; and not only did she play her own part convincingly, but she generally managed to show up in her rival that sense of mortification that it was his fond hope he was effectually concealing.

A fortnight passed; and, lo! there came the end of the lovers’ quarrel in all dramatic appropriateness.

By that time the doings of Jack and Jenny had come to be my mind’s only refuge from such a vacancy of outlook as I had never before experienced.  “All down the coast,” that summer, “the languid air did swoon.”  The earth broiled, and very thought perspired; and Miss Whiffle’s voice was like a steam-whistle.

One day, as I was exhaustedly trifling with my meridian meal, and balancing the gratification against the trouble of eating lumpy tapioca pudding, a muffled, rolling thud broke upon my ears, making the window and floor vibrate slightly.  It seemed so distant and unimportant that I took no notice of it; and it was only when, ten minutes later, I became aware that certain excited townsfolk were scurrying past outside that I roused slowly to the thought that here was something unusual toward.  Then, indeed, a sort of insane abandon flashed into life in me, and I leapt to my feet with maniac eyes.  Something stirring in King’s Cobb!  I should have thought nothing less than the last trump could have pricked it out of its accustomed grooves; and that even then it would have slipped back into them with a sluggish sense of grievance after the first flourish.