“Oh, do you mean the ring? It’s a pretty little thing I had about me, and Franziska has been good enough to accept it. You can show it to them, Franziska.”
Of course he had it about him. Young men always do carry a stock of ruby rings with them when they go fishing, to put in the noses of the fish. I have observed it frequently.
Franziska looks timidly at Tita, and then she raises her hand, that trembles a little. She is about to take the ring off to show it to us when Charlie interposes:
“You needn’t take it off, Franziska.”
And with that, somehow, the girl slips away from among us, and Tita is with her, and we don’t get a glimpse of either of them until the solitude resounds with our cries for luncheon.
In due time Charlie returned to London, and to Surrey with us in very good spirits. He used to come down very often to see us; and one evening at dinner he disclosed the fact that he was going over to the Black Forest in the following week, although the November nights were chill just then.
“And how long do you remain?”
“A month,” he says.
“Madam,” I say to the small lady at the other end of the table, “a month from now will bring us to the 4th of December. You have lost the bet you made last Christmas morning; when will it please you to resign your authority?”
“Oh, bother the bet,” says this unscrupulous person.