"I'm Spanish enough to dislike Jazz music," he said.
We agreed to meet at the Club on the following day, and I rejoined
Berry to tell him what he had missed.
I found the fifth dance in full swing and my brother-in-law in high dudgeon.
As I sat down, he exploded.
"This blasted breath-bag is a fraud. If you blow it up tight, it's like trying to sit on a barrel. If you fill it half full, you mustn't move a muscle, or the imprisoned air keeps shifting all over the place till one feels sick of one's stomach. In either case it's as hard as petrified bog-oak. If you only leave an imperial pint in the vessel, it all goes and gathers in one corner, thus conveying to one the impression that one is sitting one's self upon a naked chair with a tennis-ball in one's hip-pocket. If one puts the swine behind one, it shoves one off the seat altogether. It was during the second phase that one dropped or let fall one's cigar into one's champagne. One hadn't thought that anything could have spoiled either, but one was wrong."
I did what I could to soothe him, but without avail.
"I warn you," he continued, "there's worse to come. Misfortunes hunt in threes. First we fool and are fooled over that rotten villa. Now this balloon lets me down. You wait."
I decided that to argue that the failure of the air-cushion could hardly be reckoned a calamity would be almost as provocative as to suggest that the immersion of the cigar should rank as the third disaster, so I moistened the lips and illustrated an indictment of our present system of education by a report of my encounter with Susan.
Berry heard me in silence, and then desired me to try the chairs at the
Château, and, if they were favouring repose, to inquire whether the
place would be let furnished. Stifling an inclination to assault him,
I laughed pleasantly and related my meeting with the engaging Spaniard.
When I had finished—
"How much did you lend him?" inquired my brother-in-law. "Or is a pal of his taking care of your watch?"