“Incognito,” suggested Lord Ferriby, with a forced laugh.
“Yes—incognito,” returned the banker, gravely.
The major attracted general attention to himself by murmuring something inaudible, which he was urged to repeat.
“Doocid decent of Mr. Wade,” he said, a second time.
And that seemed to settle the matter, for they all moved towards the door.
“Leave the carriage for me,” cried Marguerite over the banisters, as her father descended the stairs. “Seems to me,” she added to Joan in an undertone, “that the Malgamite scheme is up a gum-tree.”
At the little office of the Malgamite Fund the directors of that charity found four gentlemen seated upon the chairs usually grouped round the table where the ball committee or the bazaar sub-committees held their sittings. One, who appeared to be what Lord Ferriby afterwards described, more in sorrow than in anger, as the ringleader, was a red-haired, brown-bearded Scotchman, with square shoulders and his head set thereon in a manner indicative of advanced radical opinions. The second in authority was a mild-mannered man with a pale face and a drooping sparse moustache. He had a gentle eye, and lips for ever parting in a mildly argumentative manner. The other two paper-makers appeared to be foreigners. “Ah'm thinking——” began the mild man in a long drawl; but he was promptly overpowered by his fellow-countryman, who nodded curtly to Mr. Wade, and said—“Lord Ferriby?”
“No,” answered the banker, calmly.
“That is my name,” said the chairman of the Malgamite Fund, with his finger in his watch-chain.
The russet gentleman looked at him with a fierce blue eye.