PROJECT ASHABI
African Stories. Limitless Worlds.
PROJECT ASHABI
African Stories. Limitless Worlds.
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Transcribed from “The Sleeping Car and Other Farces” 1911 Houghton Mifflin Company edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
SCENE: Through the curtained doorway of _Mrs. Edward Roberts’s_ pretty drawing-room, in Hotel Bellingham, shows the snowy and gleaming array of a table set for dinner, under the dim light of gas-burners turned low. An air of expectancy pervades the place, and the uneasiness of _Mr. Roberts_, in evening dress, expresses something more as he turns from a glance into the dining-room, and still holding the _portière_ with one hand, takes out his watch with the other.
_Mr. Roberts_ to _Mrs. Roberts_ entering the drawing-room from regions beyond: “My dear, it’s six o’clock. What can have become of your aunt?”
_Mrs. Roberts_, with a little anxiety: “That was just what I was going to ask. She’s never late; and the children are quite heart-broken. They had counted upon seeing her, and talking Christmas a little before they were put to bed.”
_Roberts_: “Very singular her not coming! Is she going to begin standing upon ceremony with us, and not come till the hour?”
_Mrs. Roberts_: “Nonsense, Edward! She’s been detained. Of course she’ll be here in a moment. How impatient you are!”
_Roberts_: “You must profit by me as an awful example.”
_Mrs. Roberts_, going about the room, and bestowing little touches here and there on its ornaments: “If you’d had that new cook to battle with over this dinner, you’d have learned patience by this time without any awful example.”
Arthur Conan Doyle
