“There is another view, that may not have occurred to you,” she answered, snatching up the gauntlet thus flung in her face. “They are undoubtedly more difficile than when you were a young man. They may have heard the good old motto, ‘Look before you leap!’”
Toby Joy sniggered audibly, and Colonel Sladen, turning savagely upon him, demanded, “what the devil he was laughing at?”
Toby, slightly cowed by the cantonment magistrate’s beetling brows and fierce demeanour, blandly answered with an impudent twinkle—
“I was only thinking of something I was told just now. Mrs. Tompkins’ English-speaking Bearer announced to her to-day that the goose had four pups!”
There was a shout of laughter at this startling item of natural history; but Colonel Sladen was still unappeased, and would have pitilessly pressed home his question, but for Mr. Skeggs, who cried with great presence of mind—
“There is Jervis coming back; what is he saying? Ah!”—with a gesture of delight—“Lunch—lunch—lunch.’ Shows he is an alien, or it would have been ‘Tiffin—tiffin—tiffin.’”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Jervis, making a profound bow, “luncheon awaits you; and Mrs. Loyd requests me to announce that as you are here to work and not to play, you are only allowed twenty minutes for refreshments.”
“Mrs. Loyd is as bad as an East End sweater,” grumbled Mr. Skeggs, handing Miss Valpy down from their mutual perch.
“You may tell Mrs. Loyd from me, that I won’t work a second over the eight hours,” cried Toby; and, offering his arm to Miss Paske, they waltzed across the ball-room, “just to try the floor.”
“Pray observe,” whispered Miss Valpy, as she and her escort seated themselves before a recherché cold luncheon, “how your man’s man, Mr. Jervis, takes care to secure a place beside a woman’s girl. Can you explain that?”