“Oh, he’ll do, Carrie,” I replied. “Caroline wants to know, Bassishaw, what a young man, good, clever, and—let me see—was he noble, Carrie? Yes, I believe he was noble, and—a brilliant talker”—(I had him there)—“a brilliant talker, would say after dinner about the girl he thought he loved.”
Carrie was helpless. I had not given her away, and she did not dare to protest for fear of doing so herself. She had a secret—I also had a secret. I would keep the case strictly hypothetical.
“Well, Miss Butterfield,” began the hero who was thirsting to do some brave deed, “I’m hanged, do you know, if I know what he’d say. He’d talk a lot of piffle, wouldn’t he—oh, but he’s a brilliant sort of chap. He’d—oh, hang it, Loring, what would he say? I don’t know.”
I chuckled softly. I didn’t want to hear Loring; I wanted to hear the brilliant talker. It was for Carrie’s benefit.
“But if he really loved her,” I said, “and his eloquence came out in a torrent?”
“Oh, I see. Well, I expect he’d say she was a confounded nice girl—or something—pretty and all that, you know—and he’d row any chap who said she wasn’t; don’t you think, eh? But why the deuce should he say anything?”
Bassishaw was coming out of it with more credit than I thought. I laughed, and even Carrie had to laugh too.
“I think,” said Chatterton, “that’s about as much as he could say, unless he were an ass. I can’t imagine his saying much if you were there, Rollo.”
“No,” said Bassishaw. “You are a mischievous sort of Johnny, you know, Butterfield. You’re deuced hard on young chaps; you guy them awfully, you know. I expect you’ve forgotten all that.”
Thus unconsciously, was Bassishaw revenged. I was hard on young chaps. I had forgotten, you know. I was an old fossil, or something. But I had a sister, deuced nice girl, pretty, and all that. You have to keep in with Johnnies like that, you know.