‘Miss Charteris, is not that a little too strong?’
‘You told me of the Dorking,’ cried Lucilla, ‘and you said
you would not miss the sight for anything; but I never said you should have it.’
Rashe meanwhile clapped her hands with exultation, and there was a regular chatter of eager voices—‘I should like to know how you would get the hackles out of a suburban poultry fancier.’
‘Out of him?—no, out of his best Dorking. Priced at £120 last exhibition—two years old—wouldn’t take £200 for him now.’
‘You don’t mean that you’ve seen him?’
‘Hurrah!’ Lucilla opened a paper, and waved triumphantly five of the long tippet-plumes of chanticleer.
‘You don’t mean—’
‘Mean! I more than mean! Didn’t you tell us that you had been to see the old party on business, and had spied the hackles walking about in his yard?’
‘And I had hoped to introduce you.’