"If you please, sir, will you allow me to go home? I'm—I'm not feeling at all well."
"Not well! What's the matter with you?" said Mr. Tinkler, without looking up.
Paul had not prepared himself for details, and the sudden question rather threw him off his guard.
"A slight touch of liver," he said at length. "It takes me after meals sometimes."
"Liver!" said Mr. Tinkler, "you've no right to such a thing at your age; it's all nonsense, you know. Run in and play, that'll set you up again."
"It's fatal, sir," said Paul. "My doctor expressly warned me against taking any violent exercise soon after luncheon. If you knew what liver is, you wouldn't say so!"
Mr. Tinkler stared, as well he might, but making nothing of it, and being chiefly anxious not to be interrupted any longer, only said, "Oh, well, don't bother me; I daresay it's all right. Cut along!"
So Mr. Bultitude was free; the path lay open to him now. He knew he would have little difficulty in finding his way to the station, and, once there, he would have the whole afternoon in which to wait for a train to town.
"I've managed that excellently," he thought, as he ran blithely off, almost like the boy he seemed. "Not the slightest hitch. I defy the fates themselves to stop me now!"
But the fates are ladies, and—not of course that it follows—occasionally spiteful. It is very rash indeed to be ungallant enough to defy them—they have such an unpleasant habit of accepting the challenge.