“Hope you will be there,” said I savagely, “and I’d like to see you taking long-field on both ends. And I hope you’ll drop a catch in front of the ladies’ tent. And I hope when you come racing round the corner to make that magnificent one-hand dive to save the four, the bally thing’ll jump and hit you in the teeth. And if you do go in to bat I hope you’ll be bowled neck and heels first ball.”
Ignoring this peroration he again appeared to be at the point of withdrawing his hateful presence. But too well did I know the General Nuisance to anticipate such a consummation. He merely seated himself on the sill in an attitude that would enable him to cope with sudden emergencies, and then said:—
“Oh, by the way, the youngest Gunter girl; you know, the little one with the green eyes and the freckles—just got engaged they say.”
“Who to?” I said fiercely. The General Nuisance certainly plumbed the depths of human fiendishness, but in conversation he had a command of topics that were irresistible.
“Who to?” I said.
“One of the Trenthams,” he smiled. “Ta-ta! See you ten-thirty.”
He was gone at last, and I had barely time to praise Heaven’s clemency that this was even so, when William entered with the face of an undertaker out of work.
“Clean gone, sir,” he said. “Abso-blooming-lutely! Looked high and low, and Mrs. Jennings ain’t no notion.”
“Looked in the lining of the bag?”
“Everywhere,” said the miserable William.