Mrs. Rattray bridled with pleasure at this audacity.
“Oh, Mr. Hawkins, I’m afraid you’re a terrible flatterer! Do you know that one of the officers of the Foragers said he thought it was a beastly spawt!”
“Beastly what? Oh yes, I see. I don’t agree with him at all; I think it’s a capital good spot.” (Why did that old ass, Mrs. Corkran, stick her great widow’s cap just between him and the curtain? Francie had leaned forward and looked at him that very second, and that infernal white towrow had got in his way.)
Mrs. Rattray thought it was time to play her trump card.
“I suppose you read a great deal, Mr. Hawkins? Dr. Rattray takes the—a—the Pink One I think he calls it—I know, of course, it’s only a paper for gentlemen,” she added hurriedly, “but I believe it’s very comical, and the doctor would be most happy to lend it to you.”
Mr. Hawkins, whose Sunday mornings would have been a blank without the solace of the Sporting Times, explained that the loan was unnecessary, but Mrs. Rattray felt that she had nevertheless made her point, and resolved that she would next Sunday study the Pink One’s inscrutable pages, so that she and Mr. Hawkins might have, at least, one subject in common.
By this time the younger members of the company had finished their tea, and those nearest the door began to make a move. The first to leave the room were Francie and Lambert, and poor Hawkins, who had hoped that his time of release had at length come, found it difficult to behave as becomes a gentleman and a soldier, when Mrs. Rattray, with the air of one who makes a concession, said she thought she could try another saucer of raspberries. Before they left the table the piano had begun again upstairs, and a muffled thumping, that shook flakes from the ceiling down on to the tea-table, told that the realities of the evening had begun at last.
“I knew the young people would be at that before the evening was out,” said Mrs. Beattie with an indulgent laugh, “though the girls let on to me it was only a musical party they wanted.”
“Ah well, they’ll never do it younger!” said Mrs. Baker, leaning back with her third cup of tea in her hand. “Girls will be girls, as I’ve just been saying to Miss Mullen.”
“Girls will be tom-fools!” said Miss Mullen with a brow of storm, thrusting her hands into her gloves, while her eyes followed Hawkins, who had at length detached Mrs. Rattray from the pleasures of the table, and was hurrying her out of the room.