"Besides," said the conjuror, "I am nervous. I positively am. Heart thumping and all that kind of thing."
"Dear, dear," said Chérie.
George sighed deeply and repeated, "I know I shall make a hash of things."
He did.
His was the first number of the program, and when he appeared he was greeted with prolonged and enthusiastic applause. Things bulged in his back and things dropped out of his sleeves; objects he should not have had popped out of his pocket and rolled under the piano; flags appeared and unfurled themselves long before they should have done so and in parts of his person where flags are not usually seen.
His mother sat bathed in a cold sweat as he fumbled and bungled, and Eva kept her eyes tightly shut and prayed that it might finish soon. But it did not. The flags, which should have been the crowning patriotic finale of his performance, having appeared in the beginning of it, there seemed to the agonized George to be nothing to finish with and no way of finishing. He went on and on, stammering and swallowing with a dry palate, clutching a hat, a handkerchief, and an egg, and wondering what on earth he was going to do with them.
Chérie had watched him solemnly enough in the beginning, but when he caught her eye and dropped the egg something seemed to leap into her throat and strangle her. When a tennis-ball dropped from his sleeve and he had to crawl after it under the grand piano while the Union Jack hidden up his back slowly unfurled itself behind him, she felt that she must laugh or die.
She laughed; she laughed, hiding her face in her hands, her forehead and neck crimson, her slim shoulders heaving, while Loulou nudged her fiercely and whispered, "Ne ris pas!"
George, returning from under the piano caught sight of that small, shaking figure in the front row; his hands grew clammier, his throat drier.
At last the curate, to end the painful performance, started applauding in the wings, and the abashed conjurer turned and walked quickly away—with a rabbit peering out of his coat-tail pocket.