"You're tickling. Although I'm very grateful for all your trouble, I cannot help observing that you are tickling. At least, the embrocation is. I've only lived a year in Manchester. I lived in Hampshire until I quarrelled with my father and cut myself off with a shilling. Then Manchester seemed as good a place as any to—atishoo! Tishoo!"
"Quite so. I understand perfectly. When you have quite finished, I'll put this flannel on your chest."
David, now completely tamed, bared his bosom for the sacrifice. Mary regarded it critically.
"I'm sure they don't feed you properly at Manchester."
"I always was thin as a child. It's nothing to do with the amount I eat. You can't have such a beautiful disposition as I've got, and not expect some counterbalancing disadvantages."
Tears gathered in David's eyes but they were only the result of a copious inhalation of embrocation. He fumbled for the pocket of John's pyjamas, where a handkerchief once had lain. "I had a handkerchief, I know. But it is a strange habit of my handkerchief common to nearly all my possessions, that it vanishes when I most need it."
He was wondering what Harcourt would think, if he could see him now—Harcourt, the president of the Union at Oxford, who wrote to him once a fortnight to implore his immediate resumption to a brilliant university career, abandoned for the purgatory of third-rate journalism. The phraseology is Harcourt's.
"Oh, I'm glad you have a beautiful disposition," remarked Mary, passing him her handkerchief. "I know you won't go off with my teaspoons then. I never trust socialists as a rule."
She corked the bottle decisively, and wiped her hands on a towel. She was enveloped in a large white apron, and her hair, as usual when it had been wet, curled in soft brown tendrils round her flushed face. She knew that she looked rather pretty, but she announced sternly:
"Now the candles and matches are here, and you're not to get up in the morning till I've been to take your temperature. I expect you'll go to sleep now because you've had so much whisky and stuff you must be a little sleepy. You don't feel sick again, do you?"