For Bob was standing open-mouthed. The cool audacity of the scheme had struck him dazed, breathless.
“Fudge!” he snorted. “It can’t be done.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Because these Wagrams are tip-top swells—regular high flyers. I don’t mean only that they’ve got pots of money, and just about everything else. But, hang it all, look at them, look at us! No fear. That cock won’t fight, I tell you—no, not for half-an-hour.”
“Not, eh? Bob, as I said before, you’re a juggins; a juggins of the first water,” retorted Clytie, sweetly. “A man is always—a man. No matter how tip-top, and so forth, he may be, there’s no getting away from that.”
“Bosh! You’ve been reading too many of these high-falutin’ novels they give you to type. That sort of thing doesn’t happen in real life, I tell you.”
“Your knowledge and experience of real life being exhaustive,” was the unruffled reply. “Let me tell you that sort of thing does happen in real life, happens every day. It only wants working.”
“Does it? I say, Clytie, why don’t you take on the job yourself, as Delia doesn’t seem over sweet on it?” said Bob, with a guffaw. “That heavenly expression of yours ought to carry all before it. It only wants working. Ha—ha!”
“I’m scratched for that running,” she answered serenely. “It’s not for nothing all the surrounding whelps—of your kidney, Bob, and others—have labelled me ‘Damages.’ But Delia—well she’s, so to say, fresh on the scene, and then, the adventure business gives her a first-rate send off. I think this job might be worked. Now, Delia, let’s have your opinion on it for a change. I’m tired of Bob’s.”
“My opinion is that never in my life have I wasted half-an-hour listening to such perfectly unutterable bosh as you two have been talking—no, never,” was the reply, short and emphatic; “and I don’t want to hear any more of it.”