“I’ll tell you what,” said Archie, “I suggest that the question be submitted to arbitration. We’ll submit it to the Guv’nor, and take his verdict as final. Will you agree to that, Grace?”
“You know quite well, Archie,” said Grace, in a honeyed voice, “that I am always perfectly willing for you to fill up your spare time in a way that’s profitable and amusing to yourself, providing it’s not likely to do you personally any harm, or to lead astray those who are younger than you are. Talk it over by all means with your father, Archie, but if I say Biffin will stand, you can take my word for it.”
The high-wrought state of public opinion, that was enough to make the French pause and the Sultan tremble, merely appeared to incite the dauntless Grace to new audacity. She positively snapped her fingers at it, and ate her toast and marmalade with an air of the most victorious unconcern.
“H’m,” said the little parson, in his best clerical tone; “she seems to be a person of character and ideas. What’s to be done? We can’t let Dimsdale be knocked down and walked over on an occasion of this sort. Grace, I certainly think that your uncompromising attitude on this vexed question is greatly to be deplored.”
“Deplore away,” said Grace, helping herself to butter. “What an amusing little man you are, Toddles!”
Affairs were at a deadlock. How was it possible to negotiate if one side would insist on having its own way?
“It’s a sort of diplomatic impasse,” said Archie. “What’s to be done? Suppose we take Biffin by main force and put him under the cucumber frame, and keep him fastened down? There’d be no more bad decisions then.”
“Plenty of bad language, though,” said some person of wit.
“And we wouldn’t release him,” said Carteret, “until Grace had actually played an innings without damaging the eyesight of the cucumbers or otherwise mutilating them.”
“I call Grace’s behaviour beas’ly bad form,” said the Harrow captain.