The bad taste of such a question appears upon the surface of it.
“No,” I said, and then added like a fool, “Miss Robinson will aspire to a younger cavalier, and one worthier of her than I. She’d never look at an old fossil like Thomas Tarver.”
“Yes, she would,” said Robinson, winking. “Faint heart never won fair lady, you know. Go in and win, my son!”
I attributed it to the whisky, for Robinson was usually refined up to a certain point. To fling his own sister down another man’s throat in this way struck me as being not nice.
I fought to change the conversation, and ultimately succeeded. Presently he went home, and on the following day asked me if I would meet him that evening with his sister at the Zoological Gardens. We often went thither in summer-time to drink a cup of tea and gaze upon the various wonders of animal creation gathered there.
“The Lion House at six-thirty,” said Robinson, and I replied that I would not fail him.
How little I foresaw my evening’s amusement! How far from the wildest nightmare flights of my imagination was the nature of that entertainment which the man John Robinson arranged for me at the Zoological Society’s Gardens.
II
When I arrived he was waiting in the Lion House, and I felt a relief to see that Primrose Robinson had not accompanied him.
“Sit here,” he said. “I want to talk to you seriously, Tarver.”