“And what makes you suppose anything of the kind, sir? I don’t carry a label to advertise my ailments that I am aware of!” cried the old gentleman, with an irascibility which convinced his audience that he was on the point of another attack. Then suddenly he looked past his two questioners, saw Jill’s peering face, and went off at another tangent.
“Oh ho! What’s this? I saw you outside in the street. What are you doing here, may I ask? Come in for a treat to see the rest of the show?”
“It’s my house! I live here!” replied Jill grandiloquently. “I am sorry you are not well. Would you like us to whistle for a cab to take you home? It’s always nicest to be at home when one is ill.”
It was all very well for Jack to frown dissent. Jill was inclined to think that the truest wisdom lay in getting the old gentleman out of the way before her father’s return, and so escape with one scolding instead of two. She raised her eyebrows, and mouthed the dumb question, “Will you tell?” while the victim continued his groans and lamentations.
“Great mistake ever to leave home in these days. Can’t think what I am coming to next. I merely stooped down to pick up a parcel—simplest thing in the world; done it a score of times before—and over I went full on my face. Terrible crash! Terrible crash! Paralysis now, I expect, in addition to everything else. Just my luck! A wreck, sir—a wreck! And I used to be the strongest man in the regiment. Ah, well, well, that’s all over! I must be content to be on the shelf now.”
Betty turned towards the twins with a scrutinising gaze, but they had no eyes for her. A note of real pathos had sounded in the victim’s voice as he bemoaned his lost strength, and their hearts melted before it. Jack stepped boldly forward to make his confession.
“It was not paralysis, sir. It was—the parcel! We’re sorry,—I’m sorry, but it was only a joke, and we never thought you would fall. No one else fell. We kept pulling it away by the string, you know, a few inches at a time, so that you did not notice, but you had really farther and farther to stretch, and it was that that made you topple over.”
He paused, and the old gentleman stopped groaning and stared at him with eyes of crab-like protuberance. The crimson flush deepened on his cheeks, and his white whiskers appeared to bristle with wrath. He was truly an awe-inspiring object.
“It was your doing, was it? You pulled away the parcel, did you? I ‘toppled over,’ did I?” he repeated with awful deliberation. That was the lull before the storm, and then it broke in all its fury, and roared over their heads, so that they gasped and trembled before it.
The victim went back to his earliest childhood, and thanked Providence that he at least had known how to behave himself, and desist from silly, idiotic, ridiculous, tom-fool tricks, which would disgrace a monkey on an organ. He projected himself into the future, and prophesied ruin and destruction for a race which produced popinjays and clowns. He announced his intention of dying that very night, so that the crime which his hearers had committed might be duly avenged, and in the same breath would have them to know that he was not the sort of man to be affected by the tricks of unmannerly cubs, and that General Terence Digby was match for a hundred such as they, gout or no gout. Gout, indeed! Toppled, forsooth! The world was coming to a pretty pass! Was it part of the plot, might he ask, to cajole him into the house and poison him with their sal-volatile tea? This was a case for the police!