“They can’t debag me, if I do!” The Manchester School face of the President himself had relaxed when the repartee of his pupil had been in good time reported to him.
The great night came. It was quarter to nine. The ball was at its wildest. Never had more daringly original costumes mingled in more unexpected combinations! The society newspapers’ reporters looked on at a loss to convey some impression of how outré, how bizarre, was this spectacle of Pierrots dancing with Dutch girls, Cavaliers with Carmens, Asiatic princes of dusky hue with periwigged Pompadours of a bygone age. But all of the gay assemblage, with all their fantasy and all their strangeness, were eclipsed by the appearance of Gaveston ffoulis, framed in the great Gothic doorway of the oak-lined Hall.
“What is he?” demanded the agog dancers, thronging around him.
“What are you?” asked those of his delighted intimates within speaking distance.
All eyes sparkled to behold his young upstanding body, tanned at the neck by the Oxfordshire sun. And a thrill of that bewilderment which is the sincerest form of flattery ran through the historic Hall when the unimaginable answer rang out:
“A nympholept!”
It was a great night.…
Next morning the Penhaligon party vacated their suite at the Mitre. To the last, Gaveston showed himself abrim with merry conceits, and, with cordial assurances that there was no better way of returning to London, he installed his parting guests in a train at the London and North Western Railway Company’s commodious station. It steamed out with a chorus of grateful farewells, and when it faded from view Gav turned to the still waving David with one parting witticism.
“They’ll have to change at Bletchley,” he said.