“Sssh, Archibald!” said the sibilant voice; “that is the Duke of Brancaster.”
“He’s a lucky old fellow,” said the voice of youth. “But if I was that gal I wouldn’t walk in the Park with a chap who has a face like an over-ripe tomato, and who gobbles like a turkey.”
“Sssh, Archibald, dearest!”
The procession was now almost alongside the youthful critic. Miss Perry, a positive queen challenging the superb May morning in its glamor and its freshness, with her chin tilted at a rather proud angle, for she could not help rejoicing simply and sincerely in the attention that was paid to her new frock, was flanked upon the one hand by Cheriton, on the other by George Betterton. Ten paces in the rear came the bath-chair with its hawklike occupant. Beside it was Miss Burden with Ponto on a lead.
“I tell you what, mater,” said the voice of youth. “If those two old bucks are not ridin’ jealous they will be very soon.”
“Sssh, my pet!” said mamma, placing a particularly neat suède over the mouth of young hopeful.
“If you call me Goose”—the deliciously ludicrous drawl was borne on the zephyrs of spring—“I may call you Gobo, may I not?”
“’Arry,” said a bystander, with a gesture of ferocious disgust to a companion who embellished a frock-coat with a pair of brown boots, “that’s what they call clawss. It fairly makes you sick. That’s what comes of ’aving a ’ouse of Lords.”
The proprietor of the brown boots assented heartily.
“If I was a nob,” said he, “I would learn to respect meself.”