“Why, Mr Lamont, you are quiet,” said Clare brightly. “Shall I offer you the regulation penny?”
He smiled queerly.
“Am I? Oh, Driffield’s making such a row one couldn’t have heard oneself speak in any case.”
“I like that,” exclaimed the implicated one. “By Jove, old chap, you do look chippy! And—you’ve got a coat on.”
“Yes. Premonitory touch of fever. No good taking risks. That you, Ancram? I say, why the dickens didn’t you send back my gee again? I’ve been wanting him more than enough, I can tell you.”
Ancram explained that he thought a day or two more or less didn’t matter, and he was awfully sorry, and so on, the while he was thinking what a beastly disagreeable chap Lamont could be if he liked, and what rotten form it was kicking up a row in public about his old bag of bones, which he probably hadn’t really been in want of at all.
“I’m tired of sitting here,” pronounced Clare. “I want to walk about a bit. Help me down, someone!”
Half a dozen hands were extended, but it was on Lamont’s that hers rested as she tripped down the cranky, wobbly steps, knocked up out of old boxes.
“You coming, Lucy? No? Too hot? Oh well.”
Lamont was obviously the favoured one to-day, decided the others, observing how decidedly, though without appearing to do so, she took possession of him; wherefore they refrained from making an escort, except Ancram, whom she promptly cold-shouldered in such wise that even he was not proof against it, and finally dropped off, wondering what on earth any girl could see in a dull disagreeable dog like Lamont, who hadn’t three words to say for himself.