Sally Knox looked at me and began to laugh.
"You should ask Major Yeates about Bobby Bennett," she said.
Confound Miss Sally! It had never seemed worth while to tell Philippa all that story about my doing up Miss Bobby Bennett's hair, and I sank my face in my tumbler of stagnant whisky-and-soda to conceal the colour that suddenly adorned it. Any intelligent man will understand that it was a situation calculated to amuse the ungodly, but without any real fun in it. I explained Miss Bennett as briefly as possible, and at all the more critical points Miss Sally's hazel-green eyes roamed slowly and mercilessly towards me.
"You haven't told Mrs. Yeates that she's one of the greatest horse-copers in the country," she said, when I had got through somehow; "she can sell you a very good horse sometimes, and a very bad one too, if she gets the chance."
"No one will ever explain to me," said Miss Shute, scanning us all with her dark, half-amused, and wholly sophisticated eyes, "why horse-coping is more respectable than cheating at cards. I rather respect people who are able to cheat at cards; if every one did, it would make whist so much more cheerful; but there is no forgiveness for dealing yourself the right card, and there is no condemnation for dealing your neighbour a very wrong horse!"
"Your neighbour is supposed to be able to take care of himself," said Bernard.
"Well, why doesn't that apply to card-players?" returned his sister; "are they all in a state of helpless innocence?"
"I'm helplessly innocent," announced Philippa, "so I hope Miss Bennett won't deal me a wrong horse."
"Oh, her mare is one of the right ones," said Miss Sally; "she's a lovely jumper, and her manners are the very best."
The door opened, and Flurry Knox put in his head. "Bobby Bennett's downstairs," he said to me mysteriously.