"I guess it looked funny to you, seeing me come in through a window. But, you see, I rang the front door bell and couldn't seem to make anyone hear."
"Away, slight man!"
"You want me to go away?" said Mr. Twist, with a gleam of hope.
"You stay where you are, unless you'd like me to lean a decanter of the best port up against your head," said Hugo. "And don't flicker," he added, awakening to another grievance against this unpleasant little man.
"Don't what?" inquired Mr. Twist, puzzled but anxious to oblige.
"Flicker. Your outline keeps wobbling, and I don't like it. And there's another thing about you that I don't like. I've forgotten what it is for the moment, but it'll come back to me soon."
He frowned darkly: and for the first time it was borne in upon Mr. Twist that his young host was not altogether himself. There was a gleam in his eyes which, in Mr. Twist's opinion, was far too wild to be agreeable.
"I know," said Hugo, having reflected. "It's your moustache."
"My moustache?"
"Or whatever it is that's broken out on your upper lip. I dislike it intensely. When Cæsar lived," said Hugo querulously, "he durst not thus have moved me. And the worst thing of all is that you should have taken a quiet, harmless country house and called it such a beastly, repulsive name as Healthward Ho. Great Scot!" exclaimed Hugo. "I knew there was something I was forgetting. All this while you ought to have been doing bending and stretching exercises!"