"Other people can kiss besides the police," Miss Popkiss declared, with a toss of the head, too exasperated by the banal suggestion to deny the act.
Peckover began to think it was all right. "So they can, my poppet, so they can," he exclaimed more cheerfully, regarding the young lady with a leer which owed much of its empressement to the champagne. As it occurred to him that a little philandering might form a not unpleasing diversion between the courses, he rose with the leer intensified and approached Miss Popkiss with the recognizable intent of sharing with Mr. Sparrow the charmer's osculatory liberality.
But the young lady was astute enough to realize the unseasonableness of what at another time she would have welcomed. Accordingly she retreated before Peckover's advance, taking care to keep to that side of the room least visible from the window. "Oh, sir, no, sir; I'd rather you didn't, my lord," she protested, in quite a virtuous fluster.
But Peckover's knowledge of human character did not incline him to believe in the coyness that will sometimes try to stiffen the market for notoriously cheap kisses. He manoeuvred Miss Popkiss into a corner and then pounced upon her.
Whether it was that Mr. Thomas Sparrow, waiting discontentedly in the rain, had had his suspicions aroused as to the real sentiments existing at the moment between his lady-love and the noble customer, or whether he was merely anxious, now that the intervening attraction was removed, to take a more curious and leisurely survey of the interesting addition to the peerage, anyhow, he again, in a lull of the storm, sidled to the window and looked in. Not seeing the guest where he expected to find him, he boldly put his head in the window and glanced round the room. To observe in a corner, Miss Popkiss, coyly—or as it seemed to him, invitingly—protestant, at bay before Peckover, who was making a playful feint attack upon her with his serviette preparatory to getting to close quarters.
Whatever effect the sight had upon Mr. Sparrow, words utterly failed him to give adequate expression to it. All he could emit was a choked half-cry, half-growl of rage and warning. At the sound Peckover gave a great jump and for the moment stood scared and paralysed. Miss Popkiss, profiting by the respite, gave a scream just loud enough to justify herself and preserve her character for fidelity without arousing her father, and fled from the room, possibly to avoid awkward explanations. Peckover stood, staring blankly at the wrathful Sparrow, who, emboldened by his rival's limp attitude, shook his fist at him viciously.
"All right, my lord! Wait till I get at you, my lord!" he foamed.
His air was so menacing that when Peckover found his voice the first use he put it to was to call, "Landlord!"
Throughout the vocabulary he could not have chosen a word which would have had a more immediate and electric effect on the qualified aggressiveness of Mr. Sparrow. That love-sick functionary seemed instantly to collapse and recede from the window which had been the frame round a picture of rustic fury. Only with his retreat, certain words, like Parthian arrows, floated in from the storm to Peckover's hypersensitized ears.
"Wait till you come outside, my noble lord. I'll teach you to dance."