"That's me," said Myra.
"I single out Miss Mannering," added Simpson, "because I'm sure we should all like to hear her make a speech."
"Oh, Samuel," said Myra, shaking her head at him, "and I thought it was because you loved me."
"The Rabbits! Myra!" we cried.
"Miss Mannering will now address you," announced Archie. "She will be glad to answer any questions afterwards; but anyone who interrupts will be hurled out. I appeal to you, as Englishmen, to give her a fair hearing."
Myra stood on a chair, looking lovely, but very lonely, and waited till we were silent.
"My dear good friends," she began, and then she caught Thomas's eye. "Hallo, Tommy," she said wistfully.... "My dear good friends, but why should you say I'm a jolly good fellow, when it isn't my birthday or anything? But how silly of you! Why, of course, we're all jolly good fellows—and jolly good actors too. It has been fun, hasn't it? ... Oh, Archie, dear.... I hope we shall all be here in the summer, don't you? Well, you can't very well say you don't, now I've asked you, can you? You'll have to pretend your uncles are very ill, and then you needn't come.... Oh, please—don't look at me like that, you make me want to cry, and I only want to laugh to-night.... Archie, may I get down?"
"She is a dear," Dahlia whispered to me. "How you can go on——"
It was Simpson who saved the situation and made us merry and bright again. He hastily trotted out the suggestion that we should tour the country in the summer, playing cricket in the day and Bong the Second at night. Archie backed him up at once.
"Only I'm off Bong Two altogether," he said. "Of course, what we want is a cricket play. We shall have to write one ourselves, I expect; there aren't any really good ones about. Act I. Rupert Vavasour, a dashing bat and the last descendant of an ancient but impoverished house, is in love with the beautiful but equally impoverished Millicent. Milly is being pursued by a rich villain of the name of Jasper Fordyce, the said Jasper being a bowler of extreme swiftness, with a qualification for Essex.... Go on, Simpson."