But don't worry.... Come! Shall
we go?"
"But wouldn't you rather wait till to-morrow?"
"No. The whole thing's so mad that if I wait till then I'll
never want to do it. And you've got to come, so that I'll have
some one to quarrel with.... I hate the smugness of London,
especially the smugness of the anti-smug anti-bourgeois
radicals, so that I have the finest mad mood! Come. We'll go."
Even this logical exposition had not convinced him, but he did
not gainsay as they entered the hall and Istra rang for the
landlady. His knees grew sick and old and quavery as he heard
the landlady's voice loud below-stairs: "Now wot do they want?
It's eleven o'clock. Aren't they ever done a-ringing and
a-ringing?"
The landlady, the tired thin parchment-faced North Countrywoman,
whose god was Respectability of Lodgings, listened in a
frightened way to Istra's blandly superior statement: "Mr. Wrenn
and I have been invited to join an excursion out of town that
leaves to-night. We'll pay our rent and leave our things here.
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