Miss Leo's face changed swiftly from affection to resentment. "Carnaby," she exclaimed, as an ill-boding light flashed from her eyes, "do you hear that?"
Carnaby, disturbed in his employment of draining the last drops out of the decanter, responded loudly, and, it seemed a trifle perfunctorily, "Never set eyes? All right. I'll take them out for you, and reset them directly."
"But I'm not the man you want," Peckover protested.
"Nobody," roared Leo, "will want you much after I've shaken hands with you."
"I want Lord Quorn," Miss Leo declared resolutely. "Failing Lord Quorn, I'll take you."
"Well, but——" Peckover began to expostulate, when Mr. Leo rolled up and stopped him.
"Now, look here, my pretty dickey-bird," he explained grimly, "I'm gentle up to a point, because my sweet sister doesn't like bloodshed. That poker," he pointed to the broken steel, "was his lordship's right arm; here is yours."
He caught up the shovel, and with a quick movement snapped it, throwing the pieces back into the fender with emphatic and dismaying clatter.
"Would you mind listening to me?" urged Peckover, regarding the object-lesson as unpleasantly superfluous.
But the man of strength disregarded his appeal. "I shan't hurt you yet," he declared with an under-lying threat, as he caught up the tongs and flourished them. He opened and closed them with a snap several times uncomfortably near Peckover's nose. "Both legs," he exclaimed, as, putting forth a mighty effort, he twisted and broke them, throwing them down with the same provoking clangour.