"If you will excuse me, Miss Valpy, I won't play just at present."
"Oh, never mind."
So Maxwell stalked away in a very bad temper with himself, with Miss Pethram, and with everything else. In any one but a lover it would have been sulks, but in the ars amoris it is called despair.
Tommy held her racket like a guitar, and, strumming on it with her fingers, hummed a little tune--a vulgar little tune which she had picked up from a common street boy--
"Tho' I'm an earl,
And she's a girl,
Far, far below my level,
Oh, Mary Jane,
You give me pain,
You wicked little----"