By good luck Dicky Brown hove in sight just as I was giving way to despair.
“Dicky, old chap,” said I, “if you love me, get sixpennyworth of bulls’-eyes or something. I’d be grateful to you as long as I live.”
Dicky looked at me anxiously—evidently concerned for my health. But a jerk of my head in the direction of the two little vixens, who were just then trying to pull a solemn-looking day boy off one of the chairs by main force, satisfied him that the case was an urgent one, and, like a brick, he flew off to the rescue.
The solemn day boy stood his persecution as long as he could, and then rounded sharply on his persecutors.
“Bother you, go away!” he growled.
Whereupon in floods of tears, the Misses Redwood made for me, and insisted on being taken up one on each knee and “cosseted” because of what the big ugly boy had done.
I complied with the energy of despair, conscious that in so doing I was allowing the reserved seats one by one to be usurped, and was at the same time rendering myself a spectacle of contempt to at least eight young persons, whom, in the gap left between the two wet faces which clung to my either cheek, I could see advancing in a body, clad in running drawers and blazers, in our direction.
It was vain for me to try to escape from my false position. The nearer the Philosophers approached, the more maudlin and effusive these unprincipled young females became, flinging their arms tragically round my neck, and bedaubing my face with their dewy kisses.
“Sarah can go it a bit when he likes,” said Langrish, with a cheerful guffaw, standing in a conspicuous place, and calling public attention to me in a way which only added to my sorrows.
“Rather. I wondered why he went down so early,” said Coxhead.