Florrie was diffuse—
“How kind of you to marry her! You must be a real good sort, Mr. Booth! There’s not many men would have your pluck, if what they say is true!”
“What do they say?” inquired Alec hotly.
“Oh, you have heard nothing? You dear, simple man! Then I’m sure I shall not be the one to tell tales out of school. Besides, it may not be true; people do tell such lies. And Bertha’s not a bad sort, though she does hold her head up. You just shut your eyes and do as she tells you, like a good boy!”
Alec, never fluent of speech, did not know how to reply to his tormentor. He knew their ways too well to take them altogether seriously; but the poison of their malice left a sting behind. His only defence was a hearty “Ha! ha! ha!”
The unanswerable reply of a small head with a big stomach.
* * * * *
In his turn Huey Gosper was not slow to hear the news, and Ruby even gave him the details of “the lark,” as she called it, they had had with Alec.
“And he just was mad when we rubbed it into his angelic Bertha! You should have seen how red he got in the face! Why, the fool is fairly crazy about her! It would only serve him right to play a trick or two on him—the conceited fool!”
A gleam of malicious joy shone in Huey’s eyes as though a sudden unholy hope had sprung up. He whispered words to Ruby and she to him, and by their pantomime it might be understood that a plot, mutually agreed on, was arranged.