“That’s quite the thickest-skinned creature I ever heard of,” she explained, “and I was only wondering which animal ought to come after him.”
“Can’t you spend the day better than in thinking up insults to rhinoceroses and hippopotami? They’d wilt with shame if they dreamed you were putting them in Freddie’s class. No flies on Freddie, as they say. Why so? Because they’d merely blunt their beaks if they tried to get through his hide. His fair companion’s pretty tough on the surface, too. Perhaps that’s why all the gnats have moved over here. Suppose we disappoint ’em by going down to the tennis-courts?”
Cynthia slipped neatly out of her hammock, and they went off together.
There was more than a grain of truth in their comments. Freddie Stickney prided himself—and justly—upon one knightly quality: he never showed a wound. The most brutal snubbing left him quite unabashed. Coming down to breakfast after the fiasco of his “inquest,” he had encountered Eileen Cressage at the head of the stairs, and he had insisted on chattering trivialities to her all the way down. At table, his beady eyes had wholly failed to see the marked coldness with which he was treated by everyone, and he took no notice of the fact that all conversations into which he inserted himself were apt almost immediately to fade out into silence. Only Mrs. Caistor Scorton seemed to recognise his existence, and when breakfast was over, he had sought her out on the lawns.
“What do you think about this affair of the Talisman, Mrs. Caistor Scorton?” he demanded, as he sat down on the turf beside her chair.
Mrs. Caistor Scorton seemed to ruminate for some moments before replying. Then she glanced shrewdly at Freddie. Evidently she thought it worth while to draw him out.
“Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Stickney. I’m not clever, like you; and I can make nothing of it, one way or the other. But I’d like to hear what you think. You’ve been putting two and two together, I’m sure, and I expect you’ve got a good idea of things.”
Freddie rose to the bait without hesitation.
“If it would interest you, I’m delighted to give you my inferences. You’ve got all the facts already.”
Mrs. Caistor Scorton nodded, but said nothing. Freddie corrected himself immediately.