“You are exceedingly foolish!” he said, struggling to speak quietly. “Foolish and headstrong and very unfair.” He turned rather blindly in the direction of the door. “And very unkind!” he added, groping among the Mormons for his hat; and Verity bit her lip. It was only to his official side that she mentally put up her fists. When he was boyish and puzzled she wanted to promise everything and give him an orange. But to yield now meant defeat for all time, and that simply couldn’t be thought of, so she hardened her heart and refused to let Israel go. The next moment she congratulated herself, for he wrecked his cause at the very door.
“You will be sorry if you do this thing!” he said, losing his tact utterly before her steadier nerve. “You can’t really care about a foolish concert, and who knows what souls may through it be laid to your account? Give it up and come to my help with the Girls’ Friendly. I’m badly off for subordinates in several cases, just now. And if you really want to do something artistic, you might teach the Sunday School a little fairy play. Think it over!”
Verity laughed again, but openly this time, gaily and whole-heartedly. The dear thing was so deliciously funny!
“Billy-boy Blackburn is too old for Sunday School,” she said pleasantly, “and I can hardly picture him as a fairy, can you? After all, Billy is the point, you know. Don’t you think we might as well be frank and admit it? And I do play fair, whatever you say. You mustn’t forget that I paid the salmon!”
CHAPTER IX
In the middle of the long, steep hill up which the village of Crump climbed, Augustus sat firmly on the best green velvet footstool out of his mother’s parlour. He was not a model son. Though still in petticoats, and the owner of soft brown eyes and a head of girlish silken hair, his extraordinary determination rendered him far from easy to live with. To desire was to have—with Augustus. He had never any doubts as to the attainment of his end.
His mother, the wife of a prosperous cattle-dealer, came to the door of the low, pink-washed house, and demanded the footstool in peremptory terms, but Augustus merely turned his back upon her, and she retired discomfited, not daring to resort to physical suasion. For Augustus had a voice, and she feared it.
Larruppin’ Lyndesay came rocketing over the hill with his cap pulled over his eyes, sitting apparently on the back of his neck. Augustus surveyed his approaching end with the utmost serenity, and stirred not an inch. He was so small that Larrupper nearly missed seeing him altogether, and only managed to stop, his heart in his mouth, when a stout Dunlop tyre was grazing the minute figure with its sash round its knees. Rising in his seat, he peered over the screen at the lord of the street.
“Treasonable offence, obstructin’ the King’s Highway!” he informed him severely. “’Tisn’t playin’ the game, hidin’ behind a pebble like that—’tisn’t really! Don’t mind if I ask you to move, do you, old chap?”
But Augustus, thrusting his thumb into his mouth, merely turned upon him a large gaze of such supercilious condescension that he withdrew his demand on the spot, reversed the car meekly and took a standing jump at the kerb of the green, landing with a rattle that seemed to loosen every bolt. A second rush wedged him neatly between the ancient posts of the churchyard gate, where he was discovered by Deb, coming out of the church, followed by a hound-dog of sorts, full of smiles. She stared at him in amazement.