“Ah! not now,” George said impressively. “Not now. It healed. Healed months ago. Don't you remember my saying one morning, 'The Rose's ear is quite healed now'?”
“I do not, sir,” snapped Mr. Marrapit, with alarming sharpness.
“Oh!” said George. “Oh!”
“Hem!” fired Mrs. Major. “Hem! Hem!”
“That tail,” spoke Mr. Marrapit, a sinister hardness now behind the oiliness. “Mark those tails.”
George marked. To this young man's disordered mind the room took on the appearance of a forest of waving tails.
“Well?” rapped Mr. Marrapit. “You note those tails? Mrs. Major's cat has a verdant tail, a bush-like tail. Yours has a rat tail. Do you recollect my pride in the luxuriousness of the Rose's tail?”
George blundered along the path he had chosen. “Formerly,” he said, “not latterly. Latterly, if you remember, there was a remarkable falling off in the Rose's tail. Her tail moulted. It shed hairs. I remember worrying over it. I remember—”
A voice from the sofa froze him. “Oh, George, don't, don't!” moaned his Mary.
Recovering his horror, he turned stiffly upon her. “If you mean me, Miss Humfray, you forget yourself. I do not understand you. Kindly recollect that I have another name.”