"I know you will."
And they went out to coffee in the rose-garden.
[CHAPTER XIII]
TOBY TO THE RESCUE
Half an hour later Toby was on his way to Stanborough, where he was to meet a friend at the club-house, and play a round of golf with him. As soon as that was over, he proposed to make a call at the Links Hotel and demand an interview with Ted Comber. Lily, in this as in all else above the common level of womankind, made no suggestion that she should come round with them. In fact, she voluntarily repudiated such a possibility.
"No proper man wants a girl hanging about when he is playing a game," she had said. "So if you ask me to come with you—if, in fact, you don't forbid me to—you'll be no proper man. Now, shall I come with you? I want to, awfully."
"Yes—I mean, no," said Toby, wavering, but deciding right.
Toby was playing with a friend after his own heart, who had just left Oxford, more to the regret of undergraduates than of tutors, and so presumably his departure was really regrettable. He was a hater of cities and five-o'clock teas, capable of riding whatever on this unruly earth had been foaled, but perfectly incapable of what he called "simpering and finesse," meaning thereby the pretty little social gifts. Furthermore, he was possessed of so much common-sense that at times he might have been unjustly suspected of being clever. Him, as they played, Toby determined to consult under secrecy as to what must be done with the ineffable Comber, and "If Buck and I," thought he, "aren't a match for that scented man, I'll brush my teeth with my niblick. Lord, what a lark!"