“I can remember nothing,” he said irritably. “I tell you I’m no good. I’ve lost my pluck!” He said these things merely in the hope that they might be denied.
“Go on. Pluck! You only want a shove. I’m not going to have any of that sort of thing, believe me. You’ve got to wake up, you have. You’ve got to be brought in from grass and stuck into harness again. Now, no nonsense. I’m the great B. P., I am, for the time being. Now, then, on you come. The blear-eyed major, quick. We’ll take the song for sung. Come to the patter!”
Danby’s fingers twitched, and already he had flung out his chest and squared his shoulders.
“I—I can’t,” he said.
“You shall!” said Fanny.
“But—but what about make-up?”
Fanny nearly gave a shout of triumph. It had got as far as make-up. She was winning!
“Make-up!” she scoffed. “A great artiste wants no make-up!”
“But I must have a moustache. I never did the major without something to twirl.”
Fanny’s quick hands were up to her hair.