Then she got George's
"dinner clothes" out for him--he maintained this habit--and she
changed her own dress. When he arrived he usually denied that he was
tired, though he sometimes looked tired, particularly during the first
few months; and he explained to her frequently--looking bored enough
with her insistence--that his work was "fairly light, and fairly
congenial, too." Fanny had the foggiest idea of what it was, though
she noticed that it roughened his hands and stained them. "Something
in those new chemical works," she explained to casual inquirers. It
was not more definite in her own mind.
Respect for George undoubtedly increased within her, however, and she
told him she'd always had a feeling he might "turn out to be a
mechanical genius, or something." George assented with a nod, as the
easiest course open to him. He did not take a hand at bridge after
dinner: his provisions' for Fanny's happiness refused to extend that
far, and at the table d'hote he was a rather discouraging boarder. He
was considered "affected" and absurdly "up-stage" by the one or two
young men, and the three or four young women, who enlivened the
elderly retreat; and was possibly less popular there than he had been
elsewhere during his life, though he was now nothing worse than a
coldly polite young man who kept to himself.
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