Whereupon she, regarding Mr Bhosh with the malignant simper of a fiend, did not only deliberately fill each pistol-barrel with a bullet from her own reticule bag, but also had the additional diablerie to extract a miniature laced mouchoir exquisitely perfumed with cherry-blossoms, and to say, "Please fire across this. I am confident that it will bring you good luck."
And Mr Bhosh recognised with emotions that baffle description the very counterpart of the nose-handkerchief which she had flung at him months previously at the aforesaid fashionable Bayswater Ball! Now was our poor miserable hero indeed up the tree of embarrassment—and there I must leave him till the next chapter.
CHAPTER VI
LORD JOLLY IS SATISFIED
Ah, why should two, who once were bosom's friends,
Present at one another pistol ends?
Till one pops off to dwell in Death's Abode—
All on account of Honour's so-called code!
Thoughts on Duelling, by H. B. J.
MANY a more hackneyed duellist than our unfortunate friend Bhosh might well have been frightened from his propriety at the prospect of fighting with genuine bullets across so undersized a nosekerchief as that which the Duchess had furnished for the fray.
But Mr Bhosh preserved his head in perfect coolness: "It is indisputably true," he said, "that I proposed to shoot across a pocketkerchief—but I am not an effeminate female that I should employ such a lacelike and flimsy concern as this! As a challenged, I claim my constitutional right under Magna Charta to provide my own nosewipe."
And, as even my Lord Jack admitted that this was legally correct, Mr Bhosh produced a very large handsome nosekerchief in parti-coloured silks.