“She said, ‘Speak louder,’” replied Mr Fanshawe with a grim chuckle.
“I can’t help thinking that there is a Providence at work,” said Miss Lestrange devoutly—“this happening and Mr Boxall getting influenza. She was putting him into my pocket at every opportunity. She had made up a party for to-day in a closed carriage, to go to Tullagh. She, and I, and He, and Lady Molyneux—ugh!—but now this blessed influenza.”
“Don’t!” said Dicky, suddenly catching hold of a tree and doubling himself up in convulsions of merriment. “This is too much—it’s not influenza.”
“What is it, Dicky?”
“I can’t tell—see here, Violet——It’s a sneaky thing to say things about another man—I must tell, though. Boxall isn’t in bed because of the influenza.”
“What, then?”
“Patsy collared his eye.”
“His what?”
“His artificial one. It popped out of his head when that sweep chap hit him. Patsy saw it on the road, and put it in his pocket.”
“Oh!” said Miss Lestrange.