So impressed was Mr. Popkiss by the stiff and immaculate Colonel's pomposity that all he could ejaculate was, "Dear me, Colonel! Lord Quorn?"
"Yes," responded the Colonel freezingly, as he stared straight in front of him over his horses' ears; "his lordship has just arrived from Australia."
"I have heard something of it, Colonel," said Mr. Popkiss, regaining his composure; perhaps because his noble visitor suggested by his attitude that he admitted him to no more human fellowship than the mounting block in the yard. "The late peer's cousin, is he not, Colonel? I trust you will not be giving up the Towers?" he added hypocritically, since the Hemyock establishment could hardly be said to bring two-and-sixpence per annum into the coffers of the Quorn Arms Hotel.
"I—ah, don't know," the buckram personage answered, still staring foolishly over his horses' heads. "Anyhow, his lordship will stay at the Towers for some time as my guest."
"Curious; in his own house, Colonel," fatuously remarked Mr. Popkiss, as feeling called to make some comment on the situation.
"It is my place as long as I pay for it," snapped the Colonel loftily.
"Certainly, Colonel; no doubt, Colonel; I beg pardon, Colonel," Popkiss protested abjectly.
A few heavy drops suddenly came pattering down on the glass roof of the yard.
"It is going to rain," Colonel Hemyock observed in a tone of irritated surprise at the outrage. "We shan't get over to Babbleton this afternoon." This to his daughters, who looked, in anticipation of harm to their finery, more discontented, if possible, than before. "We had better put up till Quorn arrives. You can wait here and I will look in at the club."
There was a waiting-room adjoining the archway for the accommodation of the county people who put up their carriages at the Quorn Arms while they shopped in the town. Shown in, with much obsequiousness, by Host Popkiss, the Misses Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock here proposed to spend a tedious and highly uninteresting half-hour. The prospect did not tend to lessen the grievance they entertained against the world in general and certain unappreciative persons of the male sex in particular.