"You were saying...?" she murmured encouragingly.
Uncle Chris shut his eyes. His fingers pressed desperately into the velvet curtain beside him. He felt as he had felt when a raw lieutenant in India, during his first hill-campaign, when the etiquette of the service had compelled him to rise and walk up and down in front of his men under a desultory shower of jezail-bullets. He seemed to hear the damned things whop-whopping now ... and almost wished that he could really hear them. One or two good bullets just now would be a welcome diversion.
"Yes?" said Mrs. Peagrim.—
"Have you never felt," babbled Uncle Chris, "that, feeling as I feel, I might have felt ... that is to say might be feeling a feeling...?"
There was a tap at the door of the box. Uncle Chris started violently. Jill came in.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said. "I wanted to speak...."
"You wanted to speak to me?" said Uncle Chris, bounding up. "Certainly, certainly, certainly, of course. If you will excuse me for a moment?"
Mrs. Peagrim bowed coldly. The interruption had annoyed her. She had no notion who Jill was, and she resented the intrusion at this particular juncture intensely. Not so Uncle Chris, who skipped out into the passage like a young lamb.
"Am I in time?" asked Jill in a whisper.
"In time?"