After which he slipped back and slammed the door, leaving
Fenn waiting outside like the Peri at the gate of Paradise.
His resemblance to the Peri ceased after the first quarter of a
minute. That lady, we read, took her expulsion lying down. Fenn was
more vigorous. He seized the knocker, and banged lustily on the door.
He had given up all hope of getting back the cap. All he wanted was to
get the doorkeeper out into the open again, when he would proceed to
show him, to the best of his ability, what was what. It would not be
the first time he had taken on a gentleman of the same class and a
similar type of conversation.
But the man refused to be drawn. For all the reply Fenn's knocking
produced, the house might have been empty. At last, having tired his
wrist and collected a small crowd of Young Eckleton, who looked as if
they expected him to proceed to further efforts for their amusement,
he gave it up, and retired down the High Street with what dignity he
could command--which, as he was followed for the first fifty yards by
the silent but obviously expectant youths, was not a great deal.
They left him, disappointed, near the Town Hall, and Fenn continued on
his way alone. The window of the grocer's shop, with its tins of
preserved apricots and pots of jam, recalled to his mind what he had
forgotten, that the food at Kay's, though it might be wholesome (which
he doubted), was undeniably plain, and, secondly, that he had run out
of jam.
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