"I'd go straight to Edwin and drag him away. He is staying at his club. If I were a man I could go in and find him——"
"Not if you weren't a member," I said.
"—And tell him what I thought of his conduct. As I'm only a woman, I have to wait in the hall while a deceitful small boy pretends to go and look for him."
It had never struck me before what a splendid institution a club was. Only a few days back I'd been thinking that the subscription to mine was a bit steep. But now I saw that the place earned every cent of the money.
"Have you no influence with him, Reginald?"
I said I didn't think I had. She called me something. Invertebrate, or something. I didn't catch it.
"Then there's only one thing to do. You must find my father and tell him all. Perhaps you may rouse him to a sense of what is right. You may make him remember that he has duties as a parent."
I thought it far more likely that I should make him remember that he had a foot. I hadn't a very vivid recollection of old man Craye. I was quite a kid when he made his great speech on the Egg Question and beat it for Europe—but what I did recollect didn't encourage me to go and chat with him about the duties of a parent.
As I remember him, he was a rather large man with elephantiasis of the temper. I distinctly recalled one occasion when I was spending a school vacation at his home, and he found me trying to shave old Duggie, then a kid of fourteen, with his razor.
"I shouldn't be able to find him," I said.