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Book, page 251 / 298 scene at large, you must pardon me for having withheld the veil of indirect narration. "Too late," you will say if I offer you a Mes- senger now. But it was not thus that Mrs. Batch and Katie greeted Clarence when, lamentably soaked with rain, that Messenger appeared on 301 302 ZULEIKA DOBSON the threshold of the kitchen. Katie was laying the table-cloth for seven o'clock supper. Neither she nor her mother was clairvoyante. Neither of them knew what had been happening. But, as Clarence had not come home since afternoon- school, they had assumed that he was at the river; and they now assumed from the look of him that something very unusual had been happening there. As to what this was, they were not quickly en- lightened. Our old Greek friend, after a run of twenty miles, would always reel off a round hun- dred of graphic verses unimpeachable in scansion. Clarence was of degenerate mould. He collapsed on to a chair, and sat there gasping; and his re- covery was rather delayed than hastened by his mother, who, in her solicitude, patted him vigor- ously between the shoulders. "Let him alone, mother, do," cried Katie, wringing her hands. "The Duke, he's drowned himself," presently gasped the Messenger. Blank verse, yes, so far as it went; but delivered without the slightest regard for rhythm, and com- posed in stark defiance of those laws which should regulate the breaking of bad news. You, please remember, were carefully prepared by me against the shock of the Duke's death; and yet I hear you still mumbling that I didn't let the actual fact
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