“Champagne to-night.”
“Yes, Sir Geoffrey.”
Margot inquired tenderly after Lionel’s hands. He had anticipated “first aid”; it was his, even to the sacrifice of a tiny handkerchief. Lionel demanded nothing more romantic than a tankard of shandygaff. Margot fetched it, for the moment his obedient slave. Joyce ministered as faithfully to her father with ginger beer.
When the yellow ’bus was full, inside and out, the Squire made a short speech to which Fordingbridge responded. How pleasant it is to hear such simple rhetoric! How invidious the task of setting it down! The better team had won. A jolly day was over.
Three cheers for Sir Geoffrey Pomfret!
And three cheers for his “lardship”!
Lionel said to Margot—
“This is the sort of thing we dream of on the Plains. The whole scene rises out of the desert, like a mirage.”
“I wonder if it is a mirage?”