"Perhaps the next time you are going to stop out to dinner you will have the goodness to say so."
"Don't be cross, old man; you knew I was going, fast enough."
"I knew you were going out to luncheon, but there was nothing said about dinner, I believe; and as to being cross, it's enough to make a fellow savage, having had to cool his heels about here for an hour and a half, waiting dinner for a man who never came; and then to sit down to a lot of stuff cooked to rags, half cold, and quite uneatable."
"Sorry for that, Gil," said Lord Ticehurst with unimpaired good-humour; "very sorry, but you should not have waited."
"O, I like that!" said Lloyd; "and suppose your lordship had not had your dinner, and had come in when I had half-finished mine, you would have been pleased, wouldn't you?"
"I don't suppose 'my lordship,' as you call me, would have cared one straw about it. What a rum fellow you are, Gil! What's the matter with you to-night, that you are going on in this way?"
"Going on in what way? I merely suggested that it would have been pleasanter if you had said you would not be back to dinner, and--"
"But I didn't know that I should not. I had no intention of stopping when I went away. Can't you understand?"
"O yes, I understand! Chapeau bas, chapeau bas!However, that's no matter now. I ought to have known that the young lady would suggest your stopping there--that the old Belwethers would be delighted to receive a person of your lordship's quality, and that--"
"There, you may drop that silliness as soon as you like. It's very funny, I daresay; but it's all thrown away, because I didn't stop at Hardriggs after all."