II
Out in the garden, hidden from the gaze of any who might espy him and set him to work, Sergeant-Major Flannery lolled in the shrubbery, savouring that best smoke of the day, the after-breakfast pipe. He was still ruffled, for Dolly had made a deep impression on him and any statement to the effect that she was not a thing of loveliness ranked to his thinking under the head of blasphemy.
Of course, he mused, there was this to be said for the girl Rosa, this rather important point to be put forward in extenuation of her loose speech—she worshipped the ground he walked on and had obviously spoken as she did under the sudden smart of an uncontrollable jealousy. Contemplated in this light her remarks became almost excusable, and, growing benevolent under the influence of tobacco, Mr. Flannery began to feel his resentment changing gradually into something approaching tenderness.
Rosa, when you came to look at it squarely, was, he reflected, rather to be pitied than censured. Young girls, of course, needed suppressing at times, and had to be ticked off for their own good when they got above themselves, but there was no doubt that the situation must have been trying to one in her frame of mind. To hear the man she worshipped speaking with unrestrained praise of the looks of another of her sex was enough to upset any girl. Properly looked at, in short, Rosa's outburst had been a compliment, and Sergeant-Major Flannery, now definitely mollified, decided to forgive her.
At this moment he heard footsteps on the gravel path that skirted the shrubbery, and became alert and vigilant. He was not supposed to smoke in the grounds at Healthward Ho because of the maddening effect the spectacle could not fail to have upon the patients if they saw him. He knocked out his pipe and peered cautiously through the branches. Then he perceived that he need have had no alarm. It was only Rosa. She was standing with her back to him holding a laden tray. He remembered now that he had left instructions that the Case's breakfast should be brought out to him, preliminary to being carried up the ladder.
"Mr. Flanner-ee!" called Rosa, and scanned the horizon.
It was not often that Sergeant-Major Flannery permitted himself any action that might be called arch or roguish, but his meditations in the shrubbery, added to the mellowing influence of tobacco, had left him in an unusually light-hearted mood. The sun was shining, the little birds were singing, and Mr. Flannery felt young and gay. Putting his pipe in his pocket, accordingly, he crept through the shrubbery until he was immediately behind the girl and then in a tender whisper uttered the single word:
"Boo!"
All great men have their limitations. We recognize the inevitability of this and do not hold it against them. One states, therefore, not in any spirit of reproach but simply as a fact of historical interest, that tender whispering was one of the things that Sergeant-Major Flannery did not do well. Between intention and performance there was, when Mr. Flannery set out to whisper tenderly, a great gulf fixed. The actual sound he now uttered was not unlike that which might proceed from the fog horn of an Atlantic liner or a toastmaster having a fit in a boiler shop, and, bursting forth as it did within a few inches of her ear without any warning whatsoever, it had on Rosa an effect identical with that produced on Colonel Wyvern at an earlier point in this chronicle by John Carroll's sudden bellow outside the shop of Chas. Bywater, Chemist. From trivial causes great events may spring. Rosa sprang about three feet. A sharp squeal escaped her and she dropped the tray. After which, she stood with a hand on her heart, panting.