“We shall do nothing of the kind,” said Grace. “He’s one o’ the best, is Johnny.”
“Grace,” I said abjectly, “I—I’m proposing to you—want you to be my wife, you know. Most awf’ly obliged if you will, you know.”
“All right, Dimmy; half a mo’. I’m certain that I’ll laugh. Thirteen from thirty leaves sixteen, don’t it?”
Her pencil continued in its scratching at a most outrageous rate.
“Pononner,” I repeated, “if you’ll have me, Grace, pononner I shall be most awf’ly, beastly obliged, don’t you know!”
It was dreadfully hard luck that at this moment, just when I had lashed myself into a perfervid and poetic heat, and a note of true passion had accordingly come into my tone, that the library door was seen to come open suddenly, if stealthily, and a magnificent being appeared, bearing a salver with more telegrams thereon.
“What, three!” cried Grace excitedly. “One’s from the Oval, the other’s Taunton; but what’s the third? Only expecting two. How funny! Yet they’re all addressed ‘Trentham, Hickory’ right enough. Did he say what made him so late, Augustus? Was he very drunk?”
“Hextrahordinary hintoxicated, Miss,” said Augustus, retiring with a sniff.
How cruel were the Fates! Here was I just playing myself in, getting nicely set, as it were, and beginning to feel at home, when the arrival of these beastly telegrams simply banished me and my remarks from Grace’s mind. And this was the more annoying since I had spent fifty minutes in battering her into listening to what I had to say.
“Surrey 401 for 6,” Grace was saying, as she tore out the contents of the first. “Warwickshire’s getting beans, as usual. Hooray! Bobby Abel, run out, 17. That’s a scotch in his wheel! It’ll drop him three places. Brockwell, 109. Tom Hayward, 82. Jephson, 54. Key, not out, 100 exactly. Good of you, Kingsmill! Awf’ly pleased! Do you heaps of good!”