"But we didn't."
"Damn it!" Collingwood said, "of course we didn't; but we'll say we did."
Lord Ellerdine began to check the points upon the fingers of one hand, as if anxious to commit them to memory even at this early stage. "Am I to say we did?" he asked.
"We will all say we did," Collingwood replied.
"I shall never be able to," Lord Ellerdine remarked hopelessly.
"Confound it, Dicky! Are you the George Washington of the lot?"
The peer shook his head more vigorously. That imputation, at anyrate, he was anxious to avoid. "No, no," he said quickly; "it's not the truth that bothers me. It's getting the blooming fib to sound all right."
Collingwood repeated his instruction as if he were teaching a lesson to a child, speaking slowly and impressively. "'We all got on the wrong train.' There's nothing difficult about saying that."
Lord Ellerdine repeated the sentence in exactly the same voice.
"'We all got on the wrong train.'"