“And what might you want, pray, with evening newspapers? Furthermore, where’s the jug?”
“If you want beer, fetch it!” she replied. “That was a good joke of yours about the horse, but you’d better not let me catch you being quite so funny again. It upset me, and I don’t like being upset.”
He snatched the journal from her. She compelled him to give it back and to take it properly. In the stop-press space he read out: “Vinolia, one; Gay Lothario, two; Messenger Boy, three.”
Baynes stood gazing at the fire, making the clicking noises with his tongue which folk adopt when, in disconcerting circumstances, speech fails.
“I’ve been figuring it out in my head,” she went on, “but I can’t make it come twice alike. Tear down that bit of paper and sit yourself there and reckon it up for me. Twenty-five times—”
“I can’t do it. I can’t do it.”
“Don’t you start being stupid,” commanded Mrs. Baynes. “Do as I tell you.”
Baynes had written the figures, and was about to enter on the task of multiplication, with one hand gripping the top of his head, when he suddenly threw away the pencil.
“My dear,” he said, “I want you to be so kind as to listen to me, and I must ask you not to be madder than you can possibly help. I admit the case is somewhat trying; but you have to remember that we all have our cross to bear. I never backed that horse!”
A pause of some moments in length.