"What would you bring to a sheep?" said Miss Bindler.
"Swedes," said Mr. Bush, before Mrs. Verulam could make reply.
All this time Mr. Rodney sat petrified, rendered inert and almost idiotic by the turn the conversation was taking. What such remarks meant he scarcely knew; but they seemed to him highly improper and indelicate. He wondered that ladies could hear them without a blush! That Mrs. Verulam could deliberately lead up to them was terrible to him.
Mr. Bush was by this time growing expansive, aware that the conversation which was now in progress depended mainly upon him.
"Swedes to a sheep, the stick to a woman," he ejaculated with a rumbling chuckle.
The Duke looked delighted with this philosophy, which rather overwhelmed Mrs. Verulam for the moment.
"You believe in the rights of man, Mr. Bush?" he said. "Eh? eh? You stick to the old dispensation, the walnut-tree cure? What? what?"
"I should be very sorry for the man who laid a finger upon me, very!" said Miss Bindler calmly, but with emphasis.
"Oh, Mr. Bush is only joking," said Mrs. Verulam hastily; while Mr. Rodney lay back, closed his eyes, and permitted his entire face to become a mass of wrinkles.
"A great many young men would be the better for a good whipping nowadays," bellowed the Duchess from her sofa. "I would begin by applying the bastinado to those who refuse to answer invitations. Susan Barrington asked three hundred and two dancing men to her ball the other night. Thirty-two answered, and thirty turned up. The ball was a fiasco."