Читать книгу Lantern Marsh онлайн

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“Do you know Dr. Horne?” she enquired.

He nodded.

“There he is now,” she said, “He’s certainly an odd genius. Look at the sleeves!”

Horne was a big, solid man of sixty, with jet-black hair under his grey cloth cap, and jet-black, bushy eyebrows raised airily. His neat, black moustache was pushed forward in a mock-careless pout. He walked with great speed, as if engrossed completely in his thoughts, but with an air of picturesque indifference, as if his thoughts were entirely lightsome. At intervals he tugged at his coat sleeves, first one and then the other, a nervous eccentricity of no significance except that it kept his coat cuffs near his elbows, displaying his white shirt sleeves for the amusement of other pedestrians. Beulah never tired of this sexagenarian bachelor. He drove a horse as black as his own hair and demanded the same degree of speed from it as from himself, namely, the limit. When starting on a country call he would jump into his buggy and race to the border of the village, beyond which the journey was made more leisurely, while on his return the whip was not taken from its holder until the houses came in sight. The Beulahite pausing on the street to watch him would remark with a chuckle: