“Dear little man!” crooned Lady d’Arcey.
They put him gently into a chesterfield, and Barbara sat beside him leaning against him.
“Nice boy,” she said.
Mrs. Brown and Ethel beamed proudly.
“And he pretends,” said Mrs. Brown, “not to like little girls. We misjudge children so sometimes. You’ll go to the dancing class now, won’t you, dear?” she ended archly.
“Dear little fellow!” said Lady d’Arcey.
It was only the fact that he had no weapon in his hand and that he had given up the unequal struggle against the malignancy of Fate that saved William from murder on a wholesale scale.
Barbara smiled on him fondly. Barbara’s mother smiled on him tenderly, his mother and sister smiled on him proudly, and in their midst Rudolph of the Red Hand, with rage and shame and humiliation in his heart, savagely ate his sugared cake.
CHAPTER VII
WILLIAM’S EVENING OUT