“Because yours is the sort of mind that would get Friday firmly fixed into it, when Thursday was the day,” you explain. “I thought you had to be off to Edinburgh to-night,” you add.
“Great Scott!” he cries, “so I have.”
And without another word he dashes out, and you hear him rushing down the road, shouting for the cab he has just dismissed.
As you return to your study you reflect that he will have to travel all the way to Scotland in evening dress, and will have to send out the hotel porter in the morning to buy him a suit of ready-made clothes, and are glad.
Matters work out still more awkwardly when it is he who is the host. I remember being with him on his house-boat one day. It was a little after twelve, and we were sitting on the edge of the boat, dangling our feet in the river—the spot was a lonely one, half-way between Wallingford and Day’s Lock. Suddenly round the bend appeared two skiffs, each one containing six elaborately-dressed persons. As soon as they caught sight of us they began waving handkerchiefs and parasols.
“Hullo!” I said, “here’s some people hailing you.”
“Oh, they all do that about here,” he answered, without looking up. “Some beanfeast from Abingdon, I expect.”
The boats draw nearer. When about two hundred yards off an elderly gentleman raised himself up in the prow of the leading one and shouted to us.
McQuae heard his voice, and gave a start that all but pitched him into the water.
“Good God!” he cried, “I’d forgotten all about it.”