"I don't know, he hadn't 'em when he came in——"
"Gave 'em to Fusby, I expect; he'll see they're properly distributed——"
"What happened, did you have a lark?"
"He rose like anything," Buz chuckled delightedly. "Chuck us your handkerchief, old chap, mine's in that coat—I'm only sorry for one thing."
"What's that?"
"I told him if he wouldn't declare for Votes for Women he'd better put up his shutters, and I know he thought I meant to rub it in about his father's shop—I didn't, it would have been beastly; but I'm certain he thought so by the way he flushed up. He's a game little beggar, he wouldn't give in, or palaver or promise. . . . Hullo, here's two more of the family——"
The two more were Reggie Peel and Grantly. The Ffolliots were not demonstrative, but they always shared good-luck or ill, therefore Reggie and Grantly made a bee-line for Miss Gallup's cottage whenever they understood what had happened. They knew nothing of Miss Buttermish, and neither of the younger boys enlightened them.
Miss Gallup returned to find her parlour full of Ffolliots; and just after her came her nephew, accompanied by General Grantly and Mrs Ffolliot, who bore Buz away in the motor to Marlehouse wrapped in a blanket and with the broken arm in a sling.
When they had all gone—the motor towards Marlehouse, the three others to the Manor—Eloquent stood at the open gate for a minute or two and then went out, shutting it after him very softly, so that neither the three walking up the road, nor his aunt waiting at her open door, should hear. Then he, too, set off in the direction of Marlehouse. He had no intention whatever of walking there, but he could not face his aunt just then, nor bear the torrent of questions and comments that he knew would submerge him.
The last hour had been for him an epoch-making, a profound experience, and he wanted, as his aunt would have said, "to squeege his orange dry."