“Hector,” said his mother sharply, “have you finished your tea?”
The youth looked resentfully at his parents.
“Go and do your exercises then, my boy,” said his father firmly.
“All right, father, all right.”
“Now, go at once, Hector,” said Mrs. Bulteel, as she always said every evening when her son manifested reluctance with regard to the enforced physical drill, judged by his parents necessary to the well-being of their weedy offspring.
“The boy gets hardly any exercise,” his mother discontentedly informed her neighbour, the Greek, who contented himself with casting a disparaging eye over Hector’s lanky proportions, as though he thought it entirely immaterial whether these were duly developed or not.
“Wonderful thing, those dumb-bell exercises,” remarked Mr. Bulteel, shooting a scraggy wrist out of his coat sleeve, and then withdrawing it again hastily, as an unsuccessful advertisement. “Hurry up, my boy.”
The door opened again before Hector had responded in any way to the bracing exhortations of his progenitors.
“Miss Forster back again?” said the Greek gentleman. “We shall have our game of Bridge before dinner, then.”
“Don’t move, don’t move!” cried Miss Forster, breezily putting out a protesting hand very tightly fastened into a white-kid glove, and thereby obliging Mr. Bulteel to rise reluctantly from his arm-chair.