From the drawing-room came the final crashing chords of “Boiling the Old Black Pan,” and then a lugubrious bass began to sing “Queen Amang the Heather.”
“Just listen to ’em!” Larry groaned miserably. “Harry Lauder in white piqué! ’Tisn’t self-respectin’! I’m thinkin’ of writin’ to him about it. An’ now Verity’s gettin’ her hair up again. There she goes! If you feel like sailin’ in after that, you must be a double-barrelled Balaclava broncho-buster!”
Verity’s voice had broken clear and commanding across the lumberings of the embryo Harry Lauder.
“Begin again, please, right at the beginning, and get the thing along! It’s as heavy as a stale loaf, at present; more like an elephant trying to dance than anything else. This is how you sing it, if you care to know.” (Faithful if uncomplimentary imitation.) “A great deal more dash about it, please,—a great deal more dash! And just have a look at the notes, will you? You don’t seem even to have seen those dotted quavers!”
“It hurts to hear her conversin’ like that!” Larrupper threw at the silent parson by the drawing-room door. “She looks such a kind, soft little thing, doesn’t she? She’s no business to be roarin’ like a drill-sergeant fifty inches round the chest. She’s jolly clever, of course, an’ she knows what she’s doin’, but it kind of makes me squirm when she slogs at the grocer or starts bullyin’ the big fish-an’-chips.”
“It hurts me, too,” Grant said in a low voice, without turning.
“Yes, but it hurts me all over,” Larry mourned, his black eyes pools of misery,—“inside an’ outside, my head an’ my heart an’ my charmin’ disposition. It only hurts you in your parson-part, old man!”
Grant turned half an eye upon him, but made no effort to contradict him. “Are you engaged to her?” he asked suddenly, apparently of nothing but the grain of the drawing-room door, and the white china finger-plate.
“Oh, yes, I’m engaged to her all right!” Larry pronounced firmly, plunging into search after a missing copy, so that he did not see the other’s back stiffen. “I should have thought you would have known that without tellin’. I’m always gettin’ congratulatin’ letters. The only worryin’ thing about it is that she isn’t engaged to me!”
Grant gave a short laugh which might have meant either amusement or relief.