“Harry Chumbley,” said the doctor’s wife, shaking her finger at him, “don’t you ever try to make me believe again that you are stupid, because, sir, it will not do.”
“I never pretend to be,” said the young man, with a sluggish laugh, “I’m just as I was made—good, bad and indifferent. I don’t think I’m more stupid than most men. I’m awfully lazy though—too lazy to play the idiot or the lover, or to put up with a flirting young lady’s whims; but I say, Mrs Doctor.”
“Well?” said the lady.
“I don’t want to be meddlesome, but really if I were you, being the regular methodical lady of the station, I should speak seriously to Helen Perowne about flirting with that nigger.”
“Has she been flirting with him to-night?” said the lady eagerly.
“Awfully,” said Chumbley—“hot and strong. We fellows can stand it, you know, and if we get led on and then snubbed, why it makes us a bit sore, and we growl and try to lick the place, and—there’s an end of it.”
“Yes—yes—exactly,” said the lady, thoughtfully.
“But it’s my belief,” continued Chumbley, spreading his words out so as to cover a good deal of space, while he made himself comfortable by stretching out his long legs, lowering himself back, and placing his hands under his head—a very ungraceful position, which displayed a gap between his vest and the top of his trousers—“it’s my belief, I say, that if Beauty there goes on playing with the Beast in his plaid sarong, and making his opal eyeballs roll into the idea that she cares for him, which she doesn’t a single pip—”
“Go on, I’m listening,” said the doctor’s lady.
“All right—give me time, Mrs Bolter; but that’s about all I was going to say, only that I think if she leads him on as she is doing now there will not be an end of it. That’s all.”