"But I don't quite understand——"
Mr. Bundercombe repeated the wink upon a smaller scale. I followed him into the drawing-room, still in the dark as to his exact political position.
The movements of my prospective father-in-law were, for the next few days, wrapped in a certain mystery. He arrived home one evening, however, in a state of extreme indignation. As usual when anything had happened to upset him he came to look for me in the library.
"My boy," he said, "of all the God-forsaken, out-of-the-world, benighted holes, this Bildborough of yours absolutely takes the cake! For sheer ignorance —for sheer, thick-headed, bumptious, arrogant ignorance—give me your farmers!"
"What's wrong?" I asked him.
"Wrong? Listen!" he exclaimed, almost dramatically. "In this district—in this whole district, mind—there is not a single farmer who has heard of Bundercombe's Reapers!"
"I farm a bit myself," I reminded him, "and I had never heard of them."
Mr. Bundercombe went to the sideboard and mixed himself a cocktail with great care.
"Bundercombe's Reapers," he said, as soon as he had disposed of it, "are the only reapers used by live farmers in the United States of America, Canada, Australia, or any other country worth a cent!"
"That seems to hit us pretty hard," I remarked. "Have you got an agent over here?"