“It’s—surely my watch can’t have gained two hours?”
“It’s half-past seven,” said Mr. Courtney, firmly.
“Oh, no it isn’t,” said Sir Timothy. “I don’t dine by Act of Parliament.”
Sir Archibald frowned angrily.
“We’d better go home again,” he said. “We mustn’t interrupt the tennis.”
He climbed stiffly into the motor.
“I suppose,” he said to Mr. Courtney a few minutes later, “that this is some kind of Irish joke.”
Mr. Courtney explained, elaborately and fully, Sir Timothy’s peculiar views about time.
“If I’d known,” said Sir Archibald, “that you were taking me to dine with a lunatic, I should not have agreed to go.”
Mr. Courtney recognized that his chances of promotion to a pleasant post in Dublin had vanished. The Irish Government had no use for men who place their superiors in embarrassing positions.