“Would you like to join?”
“No, thank you.”
“Eh? you’re afraid of being black-balled, I suppose? No fear, I can work it with them. I can walk round any of them, I let you know; they wouldn’t do it, especially when they knew I’d a fancy for you, my boy.”
If Horace was grateful for this expression of favour, he managed to conceal his feelings wonderfully well. At the same time he had sense enough to see that, vulgar and conceited as Samuel Shuckleford was, he meant to be friendly, and inwardly gave him credit accordingly.
He did his best to be civil, and to listen to all the bumptious talk of his visitor patiently, and Sam rattled away greatly to his own satisfaction, fully believing he was impressing his hearer with a sense of his importance, and cheering his heart by the promise of his favours and protection.
With the unlucky Reginald, meanwhile, it fared far less comfortably.
“Jemima, my dear,” said Mrs Shuckleford, who in all her domestic confidences to Mrs Cruden kept a sharp eye on her family—“Jemima, my dear, I think Reggie would like to show you his album!”
An electric shock could not have startled and confused our hero more. It was bad enough to hear himself called “Reggie,” but that was nothing to the assumption that he was pining to make himself agreeable to Miss Jemima—he to whom any lady except his mother was a cause of trepidation, and to whom a female like Miss Jemima was nothing short of an ogress!
“I’ve not got an album,” he gasped, with an appealing look towards his mother.
But before Mrs Cruden could interpose to rescue him, the ladylike Miss Jemima, who had already regarded the good-looking shy youth with approval, entered the lists on her own account, and moving her chair a trifle in his direction, said, in a confidential whisper,—