“Then, my dear Grace,” said I; “you take a chair and listen. If I keep you here till two, I’m going over it again, and I’m going to make you listen.”
“Oh, are you?” Had Grace been any one but Grace, I should have said she positively snorted. “Oh, are you, Dimmy? Don’t you be too jolly sure about it.”
I grieve to state that my ultimatum in Grace’s opinion constituted a casus belli. The flying squadron immediately received orders to sail, the blood darted all over her face in the most pictorial manner, and she picked one of the books of the Rector’s off the table. She began to skirmish a bit, making several feints, and awaiting her opportunity.
“I don’t want to, Dimmy, you know,” said she.
“But by Jingo if you do, Grace,” said I.
“You’d better come out of it, Dimmy, you know,” said this armed belligerent, trying to show that our relations were not yet so strained but that a conciliatory tone might preserve the peace, even at this late hour. “It’s not a bit funny, you know. It wasn’t exactly what one ’ud call a good joke at the start, and now it’s getting as stale as anything.”
“If it is a joke,” I quoted, “it’s not at all obvious. When I want to be bored I read Punch.”
Crash came Pearson on the Creed full at my head. I dodged, of course, but the momentum of that weighty theological work as it hurtled against the resisting oak panel of the library door was really ominous. The noise appeared to shake the foundations of the house.
“I’m glad,” said I, “that my nerves are fitted with rubber tyres and ball bearings.”
It was some relief to see that the countenance of the enemy had now changed to one of rue. Pearson on the Creed, lay sans covers and practically disembowelled at my feet. Poor Grace flopped on her knees and began to gather the mutilated members of this old but highly respectable tome.