“This isn’t your job, my girl!” he said cheerfully, pressing her back into her seat. “You stick to Dandy there, and grit your teeth a minute longer. I’ll have things straightened out in two twos.”
He dropped into the ring with extraordinary lightness, while his daughter slipped a hand round Harriet’s unreceptive elbow, by way of conveying sympathy and keeping her quiet at the same time. Helwise fussed down to them, dropping things and repeating the bath-theme ad lib. The people near began to discuss hats and servants with feverish politeness, bringing a faint smile even to the victim’s rigid lips. The Member stood up and tried to see something at the back of the stand that wasn’t there, and of course all the grinders followed his example.
Hamer broke a path through the crush with his own pleasant directness of purpose. Everybody was trying to make Stubbs behave, and nobody was succeeding: neither Bluecaster, tongue-tied and ashamed, nor Lancaster, soothing and propelling, nor the High Sheriff, the Chief Constable, the Judges, the Secretary and Treasurer, the Referee in All Classes, nor the Police. It was a case of carrying Stubbs off bodily, and nobody liked to do it, for, in spite of language and check and abominable conduct, he was yet One of Us, and moreover his daughter watched from the stand. To them came Hamer the Outsider.
“Sir,” he observed to Stubbs, with the simple grace of touch that gave his every action charm, “I understand you to be an authority upon Rotifera. I should like your advice upon the mounting of certain specimens of Bdelloidaceæ that I have just obtained!”
Stubbs broke off half-way in a stream of adjectives beginning with the second and fourth letters of the alphabet, and stared; and everybody round, after a momentary impression that Hamer was drunk, too, wagged their heads and repeated “Bdelloidaceæ!” in a loud chorus, as if it were some kind of charm, until Stubbs himself began to say any bits of it that came foremost, without in the least meaning to.
“I have also some fine samples of Pedalionidæ,” Hamer continued in his comforting tones, motioning Lancaster to call up his car as he engineered the offender towards the rope. “A remarkable species—most remarkable!—but perfectly familiar to you, I’ve no doubt. The Flosculariaceæ, too, not to speak of the Philodinaceæ—here we are, and mind the step!”
Stubbs made one last attempt to get up steam, but was throttled with a fresh animalculæ, hustled into the car and driven off. Lanty came back to the girls.
“I’m to drive you home, if you’ll allow me,” he said to Dandy; and “Can I find your bicycle?” to Harriet. “The third round will be through in a few minutes, but I’ll hand my job over to somebody, and we’ll clear off at once, if you like. Your man has the horse, so he’s all right. You’ve done well, to-day, haven’t you? How many firsts did you get? You and Wild Duck are bad to beat!”
Harriet grunted, but her face relaxed. It hardened again, however, as she stood up and took a last defiant look round before walking off the field. She cycled home behind the dog-cart, counting the times Lancaster’s eyes were turned to Dandy’s face. She was a trifle cheered when it began to rain heavily, and she was able to hand over the carriage-umbrella with an air of patronage, and splash along bravely in Burberry and K.; but, in spite of the “firsts,” in spite of having been proved infallible, her cup of bitterness, that day, was full.
Helwise chattered all the way as blithely as if erring fathers and shamed daughters did not exist. Bluecaster, it seemed, had promised the bath.