“I fink you are up for the O. B. H.,” said Sir Toby in tones that would have re-frozen an icicle.
The host grinned at Garden. “Means he’s going to see about pilling me, eh?”
Said that worthy, “If he does, you’ll get in for sure.”
“S-s-sh! Don’t give it away!” Again the host grinned at Garden. “But, seriously, she’s as pretty as pretty. And I’m willing to lay a hundred to ten she gets off before next season.”
Ruefully and wrathfully reflected Sir Toby, “This man Minever doesn’t begin to be Sahib. An awful pity we are not stayin’ with somebody else. However....”
As for my lord of Duckingfield, whose hostile gaze was short-circuiting Sir Toby’s inmost thoughts, he too was nursing an almost savage antagonism. “Like to punch his head for him”—that was its formula. But whose head it was that the honest and forthright Midlander yearned to punch was not exactly clear. He certainly glared at the host as the desire passed through his mind, but with even greater intensity he glared at Sir Toby.
Howbeit, Sir Toby returned the gesture with interest. The little man had been only too quick to read the thought in the mind of the presumptuous maker of munitions. How dare this newest of new men lift his eyes to a duke’s granddaughter?
To some minds it is not the least of the advantages pertaining to an old title that it is competent to ask these questions!
XVIII
During the epic days which followed, the mind of Sir Toby was haunted by this inquiry. But there were matters almost as vital to vex that ingenuous soul. From the first the rehearsals were not at all satisfactory. The author of “The Lady of Laxton” did not pretend to be more than a tyro in theatrical affairs and the company he had gathered to embody the heir of his invention was as resolutely “amateur,” if rather less enthusiastic, than himself. In the first place “social position” was felt to be even more important than histrionic ability, a fact which made the eleventh-hour defection of Mr. Montagu Jupp the more to be deplored. He was to have been the prop and mainstay of “the production.” But, as the cynical Garden shrewdly declared, the astute Montagu must have smelt a rat.