Hilda giggled thickly. She seemed to be quite comfortable again. Lalage snubbed me severely.
“I must say for you,” she said, “that when you choose to go in for pretending to be an ass you can be more funerally idiotic than any one I ever met. No wonder the Archdeacon said you’d be beaten in your election.”
“Did he say that?”
“Yes. We were talking to him this morning, Hilda and I and Selby-Harrison, outside the exam hall. We told him we were going down to make speeches for you.”
“Was it before or after you told him that he said I’d be beaten?”
“Before,” said Lalage firmly.
“Oh, Lalage! How can you? You know——”
I interrupted Hilda because I did not want to have the harmony of my party destroyed by recrimination and argument.
“Suppose,” I said, “that we have tea.”
“I must say,” said Lalage, “that you’ve collected a middling good show of cakes, hasn’t he, Hilda?”