The Viscount ignored this helpful intervention, and, heedless of an anguished plea from Mr Ringwood, cast to the winds the guiding principle which had carried him scatheless through several years of intimacy with Lord Wrotham. “Name your friends, my lord!” he said fiercely.
“Sherry!” almost wailed Mr Fakenham. “Consider, dear boy! Not yourself! Can’t be in your senses! Put it down to the champagne! Pay no heed to him, George!”
Lord Wrotham, however, replied promptly: “With the greatest pleasure on earth! Gil, will you serve me?”
“You can’t have Gil!” exclaimed the Viscount hotly. “I’m going to have him myself!”
“Oh, no, you ain’t!” retorted George, abandoning his heroics. “You can have Ferdy.”
“I shall name both Ferdy and Gil,” said the Viscount loftily.
“Well, you won’t, because I’ve bespoke Gil already.”
“Dash it, you must have other friends besides Gil!” said Sherry.
“I have, but if you haven’t enough sense to keep this affair between the four of us, I have!” said George.
“Something in that, Sherry, dear old boy,” said Ferdy wisely. “Won’t do to spread it about George has been kissing your wife. If you must call him out — but, mind you, I’m not in favour of it, because you know what he is, and ten to one the whole thing is a hum! — I’ll act for you, and between us Gil and I will fix it up all right and tight. But mind this, George! If you choose pistols you’re not the man I thought you!”