“Bot I do not vish to leave so soon!”
“Well then, while you stay, you can at least make sure that you are engaging the affections of the right girl.”
Though Bunker spoke with an air of desiring merely to assist his friend, the speech seemed to arouse some furious thinking in the Baron's mind.
For some moments he made no reply, and then at last, in a troubled voice, he said—
“I have already a leetle gommitted Tollyvoddle to Eva. Ach, bot not moch! Still it vas a leetle. Miss Maddison—vat is she like?”
To the best of his ability the Count sketched the charms of Eleanor Maddison—her enthusiasm for large and manly noblemen, and the probable effects of the Baron's stalwart form set off by the tartan which (in deference, he declared, to the Wraith's injunctions) he now invariably wore. Also, he touched upon her father's colossal fortune, and the genuine Tulliwuddle's necessities.
The Baron listened with growing interest.
“Vell,” he said, “I soppose I most make a goot impression for ze sake of Tollyvoddle. For instance, ven we drive up——”
“Drive? my dear Baron, we shall march! Leave it to me; I have a very pretty design shaping in my head.”
“Aha!” smiled the Baron; “my showman again, eh?”