Even to that belated meal we came in a very lounging and leisurely fashion.

Grant, in particular, seemed so dreamy at table that he scarcely saw the pile of letters by his plate, and I doubt if he would have opened any of them if there had not lain on the top that one thing which has succeeded amid modern carelessness in being really urgent and coercive--a telegram.

This he opened with the same heavy distraction with which he broke his egg and drank his tea.

When he read it he did not stir a hair or say a word, but something, I know not what, made me feel that the motionless figure had been pulled together suddenly as strings are tightened on a slack guitar.

Though he said nothing and did not move, I knew that he had been for an instant cleared and sharpened with a shock of cold water.