“That your governor, up there?” said he of the telescope presently, jerking a thumb in the direction he had just left.
“Which?” asked James laconically.
“Tall gent—light clothes—talks like God Almighty.”
“Yes, that’s him.”
“Good governor?” said the butterfly-catcher.
“So, so. Too much shirt, though—rather.”
“Hey?”
“Too shirty, for them as doesn’t like it,” explained James.
Then, with tongue loosened by a liberal allowance of ale, indiscriminately poured upon the absorption of the residue of unfinished champagne bottles, the faithful James proceeded to give his new friends a full, true, and above all, humorous account of his master’s idiosyncrasies, whereat the strangers laughed till they could no longer sit upright. But even the graphic James missed the real humour of the thing, as conveyed from one to the other of his listeners in a swift and irresistibly comic glance.
The afternoon had reached the debatable ground lying between itself and evening, and the diverse and errant members of the party had found their way back to the rendezvous. And last of all arrived Marsland and Sophie, trying to look as if they had been there all the time; and the latter, catching her brother’s eye, read therein a mute and satirical assurance that she had not heard the last of her tardy arrival and eke of its circumstances.