Ginger shook his head mechanically.
"Well," said Bindle, "'e was walkin' out with a gal, an' one evenin' 'e coughed rather 'arder than usual, an' she took it to mean that 'e wanted 'er to marry 'im, an' now there's eighteen little Wilkies. Ain't that true, Wilkie?"
Wilkes stopped coughing to gasp "Twelve."
"Well, well, 'alf a dozen more or less don't much matter, Wilkie, old sport. You lined up to your duty, any'ow."
"Look out for The Poplars, 'Uggles," Bindle called out. "Don't go passin' of it, an' comin' all the way back."
There was a grumble from the front of the van. Two minutes later Huggles swung the horses into the entrance of The Poplars, the London house of Lady Knob-Kerrick, and the pantechnicon rumbled its way up the drive.
Bindle pulled vigorously at both the visitors' and the servants' bells.
"You never knows wot you're expected to be in this world," he remarked. "We ain't servants and we ain't exactly visitors, therefore we pulls both bells, which shows that we're somethink between the two."
Ginger grumbled about not "'oldin'" with something or other, and Huggles clambered stiffly down from the driver's seat.
Presently the door was flung open and a powdered footman, "all plush and calves" as Bindle phrased it, looked superciliously down at the group of men standing before him.