“That’s the word. If they have a weakness it is a conviction that the world revolves round Hilversea, and this conviction Wagram holds, if possible, a trifle more firmly than the old Squire.”
“Really?”
“Yes; but he acts in keeping with the idea. There isn’t a better looked after place—well, in the world, I may safely say. All the people on it simply idolise him, especially since the old Squire turned over the whole management to him.”
“How perfectly delightful,” pronounced Delia. “I can well imagine it, for a more kind and considerate man can hardly exist. Fancy, that splendid new bicycle I’m riding he insisted on sending me in place of mine that got smashed up by the gnu—an old rattle-trap of a thing that would hardly have fetched its value in old iron.”
“Yes; that’s just the sort of thing he would do,” said Yvonne.
Then Delia went on to tell about the typewriting work he had been instrumental in procuring for her sister; and they talked Wagram for some time longer, in such wise as should have put the heir-apparent of Hilversea to the painful blush could he have overheard them.
“What I object to about him, though,” said Haldane, “is that he shirks his duties on the Bench. I suppose if it weren’t that he can hardly help being on the commission of the peace he’d resign.”
“I’m sure he would,” declared Yvonne. “You know, Miss Calmour, he says it doesn’t seem his mission to to be punishing other people.”
“Ho—ho—ho!” laughed Haldane. “Decidedly, then, he had forgotten that principle when he caned that cad for you the other day, Sunbeam. He seems to have waled the fellow within an inch of his life.”
“Why? What was that?” asked Delia, looking up with quick interest. And then the story came out.