CHAPTER III
THE DISTANT COUSINS
The end of the week found Brock quite thoroughly domesticated--to use an
expression supplied by his new sister-in-law. True, he had gone through
some trying ordeals and had lost not a little of his sense of locality,
but he was rapidly recovering it as the pathway became easier and less
obscure. At first he was irritatingly remiss in answering to the name of
Medcroft; but, to justify the stupidity, it is only necessary to say
that he had fallen into a condition which scarcely permitted him to know
his own name, much less that of another. He was under the spell!
Wherefore it did not matter at all what name he went by: he would have
answered as readily to one as the other.
He blandly ignored telegrams and letters addressed to Roxbury Medcroft,
and once he sat like a lump, with everyone staring at him, when the
chairman of the architects' convention asked if Mr. Medcroft had
anything to say on the subject under discussion. He was forced, in some
confusion, to attribute his heedlessness to a life-long defect in
hearing. Thereafter it was his punishment to have his name and fragments
of conversation hurled about in tones so stentorian that he blushed for
very shame. In the Bristol, in the Kaerntner-Ring, in the Lichtenstein
Gallery, in the Gardens--no matter where he went--if he were to be
accosted by any of the genial architects it was always in a voice that
attracted attention; he could have heard them if they had been a block
away.
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