"You don't say so. I wonder now what they've done that for."
"They complained of the house being damp for one thing. If it was, that was Hitchin's fault, not mine."
Was everybody in a plot to badger him about those wretched Ballingers?
He was getting sick of it. And he wanted to speak a word to Mrs. Levitt.
Mrs. Levitt had come up in the tail of the procession. She had given in her name and her subscription to Barbara Madden; but she lingered, waiting no doubt for a word with him. If only Corbett and the rest of them would go.
"Of course. Of course it was Hitchin's fault," said the Rector, with imperishable geniality. "Well…. Good night, Waddington, and thank you for a most—a most stimulating evening."
They had gone now, all but Sir John and Lady Corbett. (He could hear her talking to Fanny at the back of the platform.) Mrs. Levitt was gathering her scarf round her; in another minute she would be gone. And Corbett wouldn't go.
"I say, Waddington, that's a splendid young cub of yours. See him go over the top? He'd have taken them all on. Licked 'em, too, I shouldn't wonder."
Mr. Waddington resented this diversion of the stream of admiration. And he was acutely aware of Mrs. Levitt standing there, detached but waiting.
"Was I really all right, Corbett?" He wasn't satisfied with his speech.
If only he could remember what he had left out of it.
"Absolutely, my dear chap. Absolutely top-hole. You ought to make that boy a soldier."