“No,” said his friend. “Like as not he’d tell her just to curry favour with her. I’m going to tell him he’s not to come to the house no more. That’ll make her want him to come, if anything will. Now there’s no use wasting time. You begin to-day.”
“I don’t know what to say,” murmured Raggett, nodding to him as he raised the beer to his lips.
“Just go now and call in—you might take her a nosegay.”
“I won’t do nothing so damned silly,” said Raggett shortly.
“Well, go without ’em,” said Boom impatiently; “just go and get yourselves talked about, that’s all—have everybody making game of both of you, talking about a good-looking young girl being sweet-hearted by an old chap with one foot in the grave and a face like a dried herring. That’s what I want.”
Mr. Raggett, who was just about to drink, put his mug down again and regarded his friend fixedly.
“Might, I ask who you’re alloodin’ to?” he inquired somewhat shortly.
Mr. Boom, brought up in mid-career, shuffled a little and laughed uneasily. “Them ain’t my words, old chap,” he said; “it was the way she was speaking of you the other day.”
“Well, I won’t have nothin’ to do with it,” said Raggett, rising.
“Well, nobody needn’t know anything about it,” said Boom, pulling him down to his seat again. “She won’t tell, I’m sure—she wouldn’t like the disgrace of it.”