But this appalling threat had been used too often to produce anything more than an excess of meek submissiveness. The delinquents at once assumed the air and bearing of young martyrs, took their cups quietly, and sat down side by side on a little sofa.
“I’ll tell you what, you two,” said the Colonel: “I won’t have any one fishing with worms in my trout streams.”
“Why? Is it any harm?” asked Evelyn, apparently surprised.
“Harm!” cried Jocelyn. “It’s poaching, it’s spoiling the fishing outright, and it’s against the law in the close season—that’s all.”
“We didn’t know,” said Gwendolen.
“And you’d better not ride Schoolboy without my leave,” put in Jocelyn.
“Nor take Charley’s Aunt out of her box without asking me,” added Claude.
“Nor borrow my best gun to pot rooks with,” said the Colonel.
“Nor dare to go near any of the motors, and especially not the new Mercèdes,” enjoined Lady Jane very severely.
But by-and-by, when she was dressing for dinner, and had reached the stage of having her hair done, she looked through the evening paper, as she usually did during that tedious process, and she found in the column of advertisements the one she had last inserted, and she read it over.