‘How dare you call out Sally, and tell her to come here? Eh? What do you mean by it? You——’
‘I say—hold on,’ exclaimed Carruthers quickly, raising a defensive arm. ‘Hold on a bit. Look—here she is, here’s Sally——’ and he pointed to the fawning sinner.
Jocelyn’s fists fell limply to his sides. He flushed, and looked extremely foolish. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Carruthers, with immense sarcastic politeness.
‘It—it’s my wife’s name,’ stammered Jocelyn, ‘and I thought you knew her, and were incredibly cheeking her——’
Carruthers, staring at his nervous twitching face, didn’t laugh, but simply nodded. Having seen Sally he simply nodded.
‘That’s all right,’ he said gravely; and for some reason added impulsively, ‘old man.’
He watched the thin figure hurrying off again. ‘A bit of responsibility,’ he thought. ‘The poor chap looks all nerves and funk already——’ for it was plain they couldn’t have been married long, plain they were both too young to have been anything long.
Carruthers, who was as solid and matter-of-fact outside as he wasn’t inside, turned away so as not again to interrupt, and went home across the fields whistling sad tunes in minor keys. Marvellous beyond imagining to be married to beauty like that, but—yes, by God, one would be on wires the whole time, there’d be no end to one’s anxieties. And his final conclusion was that Jocelyn was a poor devil.