I was red as a boiled beetroot, and smarting all over, and I expect my answers showed it.
“I have not said that I would favour anybody yet. I don’t want other people’s flowers, or other people’s seats in boxes either.”
“Miss Norah, I entreat you——”
“Miss Norah, I beseech you——”
Just as those two men came rushing at me, and began to overwhelm me with another flood of words, the door was opened again, and in came Walter Hammond.
CHAPTER IX.
MORE TREACHERY
Walter Hammond is a truly remarkable person to associate with Eveleen. She is rather short, even for a girl, while he is a perfect lamp-post of a man—one of those long, lean persons who seem all bones. As he fancies himself horsey, and will persist in dressing the part, and wearing the tightest clothes, his extreme slimness is still more conspicuous. He is one of those creatures who, when they are in a room, seem to be all over the place at once. When he is sitting down he never seems to know what to do with his legs, they really are tremendously long; if he stretched them out at full length under an ordinary dining-table, I should not be surprised if his toes peeped out the other side; and when he stands up he is equally at a loss what use to make of his hands and arms. He speaks in a rapid, jerky sort of way—in fact, he is jerky altogether. When anyone addresses him, he not only twists his body round with one jerk, and his head with another, and puts his eyeglass in with one jerk, and out with a second, but he jerks at his moustache, first with his right hand, and then with his left, in a fashion which a slightly nervous person, who is not used to him, must find not a little disconcerting. But I believe he is harmless, though I don’t think he is as wise as he might be. He appears to have the whole of the “Turf Guide,” or whatever you call the thing, at his finger ends; and, if you will let him, will talk about horses until you begin to pray for the hour when motor-cars will have made them as extinct as the dodo.
His manner of entering the room was, on that occasion, characteristic. He was groping about for his eyeglass, which, as usual, eluded search between the buttons of his waistcoat, and was carrying his hat, and gloves, and stick, and a good-sized parcel, with an evident want of certainty as to the hand they ought to be in, which it gave one the fidgets to observe.
Audrey greeted him with a degree of warmth which suggested that she regarded his appearance as a welcome interlude. I know I did. I should have regarded the advent of anyone or anything as a welcome interlude just then, I believe even mad dogs; though, as I have never encountered a mad dog, and never wish to, perhaps I had better not be too sure.
“Oh, Mr Hammond, is that you? How delightful! We want somebody to amuse us, we are so dull. Eveleen will be charmed; she will be down in a moment.”