“What’s it been doing?”
“The savage brute chased me all over the garden and kept me sitting up on that damned castle the whole of the morning!”
“Father darling,” interposed Billie, pausing on her way up the stairs, “you mustn’t get excited. You know it’s bad for you. I don’t expect poor old Smith meant any harm,” she added pacifically, as she disappeared in the direction of the landing.
“Of course he didn’t,” snapped Mr. Mortimer. “He’s as quiet as a lamb.”
“I tell you he chased me from one end of the garden to the other! I had to run like a hare!”
The unfortunate Bream, whose sense of the humorous was simple and childlike, was not proof against the picture thus conjured up.
“C’k!” giggled Bream helplessly. “C’k, c’k, c’k!”
Mr. Bennett turned on him. “Oh, it strikes you as funny, does it? Well, let me tell you that if you think you can laugh at me with—with—er—with one hand and—and—marry my daughter with the other, you’re wrong! You can consider your engagement at an end.”
“Oh, I say!” ejaculated Bream, abruptly sobered.
“Mortimer!” bawled Mr. Bennett, once more arresting the other as he was about to mount the stairs. “Do you or do you not intend to destroy that dog?”