“Oh, no, lady, no, not for worlds.”
“It is better not to mention names,” she went on.
“To hear is to obey, lady, as the Turks say when their wives talk to them. We’ll conclude that the subject of this brief discourse is a person called Nameless, otherwise Bombo Elephanto.”
“Very well,” she replied turning back to the girl.
MacDaly, sighing heavily, ran his finger down his manuscript, obliged by Stargarde’s dictum to skip a paragraph of proper names. “Well, time rolled on,” he said at last, “and as it is customary in the finishing-up dance, be it as it may, war dance or otherwise, some one has to pay the piper, this great Mohawk or Mogul as I may call him, Bombo Elephanto, ferociously sets to work teeth and toenails to kill a crow for himself.”
“What under the sun is he at?” growled Camperdown.
“Hush,” whispered Stargarde; “I fear he is on the subject of Colonel Armour. MacDaly has a grudge against him because he sneers at this establishment of the Pavilion, and this is the way he has of settling it. If he is too explicit I shall have to stop him.”
“Bombo Elephanto,” resumed MacDaly, “being aroused into some of the mental affections to which he is recently subject, professionally entitled to be periodical hemidemicrania——”
“H’m; this sounds interesting,” muttered Camperdown.
MacDaly eyed him cunningly. “Ha, the gentleman with the beetling brows is more interested now than he was at first.”