“Oh, a couple of kids—not in our house,” replies Master Cusack, by no means cordially. “Jolly cheek of them talking to you like that, though!”
“Not at all,” says the captain. “I’d like to see their race, Harry.”
But Harry has no notion of throwing his father away upon the “junior hundred yards,” and as they are now in “The Big,” in the midst of the festive assembly there congregated, he is easily able to shirk the question.
An important event is evidently just over. The company has crowded into the enclosure, and boys, ladies, gentlemen, masters are all mixed up in one great throng through which it is almost impossible for even so dexterous a tug as young Cusack to pilot his worthy relative.
The band is playing in the pavilion, distant cheers are audible in the direction of the tents, a shrill uproar is going on in the corner where the junior hundred yards is about to begin, and all around them is such a buzz of talking and laughing that Captain Cusack is fairly bewildered.
He would like to be allowed to pay his respects to the Doctor and Mrs Patrick, and to his boy’s master, and would very much like to witness the exploits of those two redoubtable chums Telson and Parson; but he is not his own master, and has to do what he is told. Young Cusack is shouting every minute to acquaintances in the crowd that he has got his father here. But every one is so wedged up that the introductions chiefly consist of a friendly nodding and waving of the hand at the crowd indefinitely from the gallant father, who would not for the world be anything but gracious to his son’s friends, but who cannot for the life of him tell which of the score of youthful faces darting sidelong glances in their direction is the particular one he is meant to be saluting. At last in the press they stumble upon one boy at close quarters, whom Cusack the younger captures forthwith.
“Ah, Pil, I was looking for you. Here’s the—my father, I mean—R.N., you know.”
“How are you, captain?” says the newcomer. He had heard Captain Cusack was coming over, and had mentally rehearsed several times what it seemed to him would be the most appropriate salutation under the circumstances.
The captain says he is very well, and likes the look of Mr “Pil” (whose real name is Pilbury), and looks forward to a little pleasant chat with his son’s friend. But this hope is doomed to be a disappointment, for Pil is in a hurry.
“Just going to get the house tubs ready,” he says; “I’ll be back in time for the mile.”