Deb opened her lips wrathfully, but got no further, for Verity was listening to somebody else,—indeed the whole café was listening,—to an intensely vitalised young person who roared directions to his chauffeur as he plunged headlong into the building, afterwards tearing up the stairs with the impetuosity of several elephants gone amok. Such was the usual advent of Larruppin’ Lyndesay.
Deb knew who was coming before the black bullet head and sturdy shoulders cannoned round the corner into Witham’s illustrious mayoress, who had looked in for an innocent glass of milk; and while he was busy picking her up and dusting her down, shooting her to the ground floor and thrusting her into his own car, she called her friend to account.
“Why did you do it?” she asked reproachfully. “You know I can’t meet any of the Lyndesays. And Larrupper will tell the whole town I am here!”
“The new parson——” Verity began innocently, and Deb leaned across the table and shook her. Then she sat down and covered her face with her hands.
“Can’t you understand,” she added, very low, “that it hurts me to meet them, seeing that I can have nothing to do with them any more?”
“Just because one berry had a grub in it, I don’t see why you need burn the whole bush!” Verity answered doggedly. “You’ve been treated abominably, scandalously! Please credit some of us with sufficient decency to realise that. You’re behaving as though we were a crowd of savages dancing round you with assegais! And the Arevar Lyndesays had nothing to do with the affair, anyhow. Larrupper’s awfully hurt because you’ve given him the cold shoulder, and I won’t have Larrupper ill-treated. It’s like being cruel to a—a donkey. And he’s quite upset enough as it is over the Mayoress.”
The mayoral catastrophe seemed to have disorganised Larrupper completely, for, upon his volcanic return, he rushed at the nearest table and shook hands with two girls he had never seen in his life, before he discovered Verity sitting with shocked eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“Disgraceful!” she observed, looking like a disapproving tombstone. “I’m not sure that we ought to know you. Sit down and say the first three stanzas of the Catechism, just to let the steam off your voice before you speak to Deborah.”
But Larrupper, crimson with emotion to the thick roots of his inky hair, seized upon Deb’s hand without an instant’s hesitation.
“Oh, you’ve been cruel, Debbie dear!” he reproached her. “I called and called, an’ stood outside an’ swore an’ threw things, an’ they gave me the boot every time, an’ told me you weren’t seein’ anybody. We’ve always been pals, you and I, ever since we fell into the river together, tryin’ to be trout, an’ to shut your door in Larrupper’s pleadin’ face is what I’d never expected to get from you,—hanged if I did!”