David was lying on his back under the big elm-tree near the cricket
pavilion one Sunday afternoon in mid-June. By him, upright and
attentive, sat the faithful Bags, listening and occasionally playing the
part of Greek chorus (that is to say, putting in short, appropriate
reflections) to a quantity of surprising information. Both boys wore the
white tie characteristic of prefects on Sunday, for both had got their
promotion into the lower sixth at Easter, and were colleagues of the
inefficient Manton and Crossley. Those two young gentlemen, it may be
remarked, were vastly relieved to have the burden of authority taken off
their somewhat feeble shoulders, and David and Bags (particularly David)
ruled the house with genial exuberance, and, when necessary, a rod of
iron.
Just now both the iron and the exuberance were relaxed, and David lay
there in an abandonment of physical laziness. His straw hat, with
cricket eleven colours, was tilted over the top part of his face, so as
to shield his eyes from the speckles and sparkles of sun that filtered
through the canopy of leaves above him, and his mouth and chin alone
were visible. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, showing
a white hiatus between a despondent sock and the end of his trousers,
and a persistent fly kept settling there, an attention which he
acknowledged by dabbing at it with the other ankle.
“’Tisn’t as if I was a little boy any longer,” he said. “When a fellow
is close on seventeen, as you and I are, it’s time he began to realise
that he’s grown up. Why, my mother was only seventeen when she married.”
“But do you propose to marry at seventeen?” asked Bags with sarcastic
allusion to the conversation that had gone before. “Where’ll she live?
She can’t very well sleep in dormitory.”
David gave a little spurt of laughter, and the sun shone on his white
teeth, and down his red throat. But he quickly became grave again.
“Is that funny?” he said. “If so, I suppose I’d better laugh, though I
wish I saw the point. Who said I was going to marry? O gosh, what a
clipper she is!”
“And it’s not much more than a fortnight ago that you thought all girls
were rotten,” said Bags.
“More fool me, then, and more fool you for still thinking so. Lord, I
wish I was really grown up, quite old, I mean, nineteen or twenty. I
say, do you think she looked at me at all in chapel this morning?”
“I don’t think so,” said Bags cheerily, “and I was watching her pretty
nearly all the time, as I knew you would ask. Oh, yes, she did once,
when you began to sing Amen before it was time. But she looked away
again at once.”
“Ha, ha,” said David in a dry, speaking voice, not laughing at all.
“Well, she’s bound to come to the Old Boys’ match, isn’t she? And I
don’t see how she can help noticing if I take any wickets.”
“Nor if you get constantly hit out of the ground,” said Bags.
David found he agreed with this.
“You’re a jolly sympathetic sort of pal,” he said at length.
Bags had a certain defence.
“Well, it seems so queer of you,” he said. “It’s rot if you’re going to
think about and talk about nothing else than a female girl. Besides, she
must be frightfully old. I shouldn’t wonder if she was twenty. Why, your
mother had been married three years when she was as old as that.”
“Yes, and had had two children and had also died,” said David rather
embarrassingly.
“Oh, sorry; I didn’t know,” said Bags. “But about your girl now,” he
went on hurriedly. “How do you know she isn’t engaged already? She
easily might be; she’s awfully pretty. I grant you that: at least, I
suppose she is, though both you and I used to think that all girls
looked exactly alike.”
“Idiots! Idiots we were!” said David, kicking wildly in the air.
“And what are you going to do?” continued Bags, who always saw the
practical issues. “Are you going to tell her how frightfully keen you
are on her!”
“I expect she guesses,” said David solemnly. “She came to tea with me
twice in my study, and it’s rather marked for a fellow to ask a don’s
daughter to tea twice in the same half, specially if she comes the first
time.”
“Well, but you didn’t say anything sweet and moonlightly to her,” said
Bags. “You talked about nothing but cricket. Besides, Plugs and I were
there the whole time, and so was Mother Gray.”
David drew a long breath, and stretched his arms and legs out in the
form of one crucified till elbows and knees were taut.
“Violet Gray!” he said, dwelling on the syllables. “Did you ever hear
such a jolly name? And it’s just like her; it’s a slim,
honey-coloured-hair name.”
Bags groaned slightly. It really was appalling for David to be in this
deplorable state.
“Violet Gray,” he said, in a business-like manner. “H’m, Violet Gray! I
think it sounds better than Violet Blaize.”
David sat up.
“Bags, you don’t understand one single thing about it,” he said. “How
can I explain? She’s just the most wonderful and beautiful thing that
ever happened. I wonder if Frank will understand. I shall tell him, but
nobody else. He’s coming down end of next week.”
“He’ll probably cut you out,” said Bags, who thought a bracing treatment
was best for his idiotic friend.
“Not he: we’re pals. Of course he could if he wanted, since any girl
would fall in love with Frank straight off, if he held up his little
finger. Jove, I’d give anything to see the ’Varsity cricket-match this
week. And to think that in final house-match last year I was in at one
end, and a Cambridge cricket blue the other.”
“Well, that happened to everybody else in the house-eleven,” said Bags,
“since Maddox went in first and carried his bat!”
David laughed.
“So it did,” he said. “I’ll back you against any one in the world, Bags,
for bald literal prosaicness. You haven’t got an ounce of imagination.
You see things just exactly as they happen. You’ve less of romance
than—than a horse-roller,” he said, looking round for inspiration and
seeing that useful article with its shafts in the air.
“Perhaps I have, perhaps I haven’t,” said Bags. “But it’s perfectly true
I don’t jaw about it. Never mind that. Look here: supposing you might
either kiss Violet Gray, twice, we’ll say, or see the Oxford and
Cambridge match, which would you choose?”
“Depends on the match,” said David. “Of course if Frank was going to
make a century, and I were to see him do that, I don’t know what else I
could choose. O Lord, but fancy kissing her, though! I wish you wouldn’t
ask such stumpers. But that’s you all over. You want me to be practical,
and say which I should like best. But I just can’t! I—I feel like a dog
which is being whistled to from opposite directions by two fellows it
loves. Doesn’t know which way to go.”
Bags sniffed scornfully.
“Oh, you’ve not got it so desperately, if you only feel like that,” he
said.
David shut his eyes and made his mouth tight with an air of martyr-like
determination.
“I should choose kissing her,” he said, “because Frank could tell me all
about the match afterwards, and besides, it would all be reported in the
_Sportsman_, and I could read about it. But I couldn’t read about my
kissing her in the paper; at least, I don’t know in which. Oh Lord, but
fancy missing seeing Frank putting perfectly straight balls away to the
leg boundary in the ’Varsity match, and then scratching his ear, as he
always does when he hits a boundary, as if wondering what on earth has
happened to the ball. I don’t know which I should choose. I Don’t Know.”
David looked mournfully round for inspiration and lay down again.
“After all, I wonder whether it’s worth while doing anything or getting
anything,” he said with a sudden lugubrious accent. “I tried to think it
would be a damned fine—jolly fine thing to get into the sixth, and yet
before a month was out we both got absolutely accustomed to it. It’s
been just the same about getting into school-eleven—oh, well, not
quite, because I do enjoy that most awfully still. But I dare say it
won’t last. Why, a year ago, if I had been told that I might have any
two things I wanted, I should have chosen to get into the sixth and the
eleven. It didn’t seem that there was anything more to want.”
“I should have thought you would have chosen that Maddox shouldn’t
leave,” remarked Bags.
“No use wishing that: he had to. Besides, if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be
in the Cambridge eleven now. And you can’t choose anything that clips
your pal’s wings. ’Tisn’t my expression; Adams said it the other day
when he was talking to me about Jev.”
“Didn’t know Jevons had any wings,” said Bags.
“Nor did I. But Adams seems to think so. I say, Adams is rather a wise
sort of man, and he sees just about three times as much as I thought.
Oh, and he told me Hughes had passed into Sandhurst. He must have become
a decent chap again.”
“They do,” said Bags.
“Jolly glad! About Adams: I always imagined that as long as he wasn’t
bothered, he didn’t mind much what happened, short of a public row. But
I believe his funny old eye is on us more than we think.”
“And much more than it used to be!” said Bags. “You know the bizz
about the Court of Appeal woke him up tremendous. There was a regular
Insti- and Consti-tution going on in the house under his very nose,
and he had never suspected it. Up till then he didn’t bother about
what any one did as long as there wasn’t a row. You know, David, the
house was a perfect hell about the time you and I came here, and
Adams hadn’t a notion of it.”
David sat up quickly.
“I dare say,” he said, “but Frank kept all that away from me. Anyhow,
the house is pretty well all right now. There is nothing to make a row,
no smoking, no cribbing, no filth. It’s ever so much more cheery to be
like that. And just think that less than three years ago, Bags, you and
I were just beginning as two dirty little fags. What a bag of tricks has
happened since then! What were we talking about? Oh, Jevons. Adams was
awfully decent to me about it; made me blush. He said I’d taught Jev to
be clean—that’s true. When he first used to fag for Frank, I wanted to
wash the tea-cups again when his filthy little paws had touched
them—and, oh yes, he said I’d cured him of swearing, which perhaps was
true also, though it seemed rather bad luck on him to be whacked by me
for swearing, when, as Adams said, he’d picked it up from me. So I had
to cure myself as well, which I’ve almost done. But then I couldn’t
whack myself when I swore, so Jev got on quicker than I did.”
“You’re not getting on much now,” remarked Bags, patiently listening.
“Yes, I am. Shut up; I’m just coming to the wings. Adams said I was
fussing over him too much, and tying a string to his leg, and clipping
his wings, when it was time for him to fly about as he damn pleased.
(Lord, Jev would have got whacked for that!) But, you see, he’s turning
out rather a fetching kid—good-looking, you know, and all that, and I’m
not going to have him taken up by some brute and spoiled. However, any
one who tries will have a nasty time with me first. But I suppose Adams
is right: Jev’s got to begin looking after himself. I’m rather sorry in
a way though. It’s good sport looking after a kid like that, and seeing
it doesn’t come to any harm. He’s an affectionate little beggar, too,
and I believe he knows it would make me pretty sick if he got into
beastly ways. I say, I’m afraid I’m talking like a missionary.”
“On the plains of Timbuctoo,” remarked Bags.
“Yes, anywhere. Rum fellow you are, Bags. You let me jaw to any extent
without yawning or telling me to shut it. But there are such a lot of
frightfully interesting things that you must talk about in order to find
out what you really think. Jev, for instance: I had no idea that I was a
missionary till I began to jaw. By the way, my father is coming down for
the Old Boys’ match next week. D’you remember that awful morning when he
bowled into the wrong net at Helmsworth and how ashamed I was? Funny how
one changes: I should just love it if he did it again now, because it’s
so jolly sporting of him to try to bowl at all. My sister’s coming, too,
and of course Frank will be here playing for the Old Boys. What a
family! They all love Frank at home; he and my father are tremendous
pals: they talk about Norman and Perpendicular and Transitional till
all’s blue. He stayed with us most of the Christmas holidays, you know,
when his mother was abroad.”
David sat up again.
“Lord, what a lot of things there are!” he said appreciatively.
“Not to mention Her,” said Bags.
“No. Oh, by the way, I saw her coming out of Madden’s the photographer’s
the other day. Do you suppose she’d been done? By Jove, shouldn’t I like
one?”
“Well, ask her then,” said Bags with infinite patience.
David knitted his forehead into a diplomatic frown.
“I couldn’t straight off like that,” he said. “But I might lead up to
it. I might say I thought Madden took jolly good photographs, and see
what she said.”
“Suppose she said that she thought he didn’t,” said Bags wearily.
“Well, I could say that—that no one could do justice to some people. Or
is that laying it on rather thick? Oh, by the way, I’ve been devilish
cunning. The Head told me that my last iambics were pretty rotten, and
that I’d better have some private tuition, so I asked if I might go to
old Gray for it. Jolly smart, that. So I’m going to drop French and have
private tu with Gray, beginning to-morrow.”
“‘Come into the garden, Maud,’” remarked Bags.
“What’s Maud got—oh, I see, you mean Violet. Yes, that’s the idea.
Going in and out of the house, I’m sure to run across her. See? Why,
it’s striking four. Let’s go down to house.”
David, as is the way of boys rising seventeen, had been growing
tremendously these last six months, not in physical ways only, but in
stature of the mind. It was impossible to imagine a boy less of a prig
than he, or one so unweighted with the sense of duty or responsibility,
but with his growth he had taken up his responsibilities quite simply
and unconsciously and eagerly, without having any egoism about it. He
did not, in fact, do these things and behave in a manner that made him
so breezy a treasure to his house-master because he heavily realised
that there were things he ought to do, and a manner in which he ought to
behave, but because he obeyed unconsciously the bent of his natural
instincts, which were those of a very high-spirited and excellent fellow
now budding from boyhood into early manhood. He had no private
meditations at all on the subject, but merely lived in active and
wholesome ways and enjoyed himself immensely, and if by any chance he
had come to learn what Adams really thought of him, he would have had no
doubt that his informant was just “pulling his leg.” His genial
unconsciousness that he had any influence at all was exactly that which
made his influence so strong. He had the admirable gift of not thinking
about himself, but purely about the large quantity of attractive affairs
that made up life, and the number of “jolly chaps” with whom he was
associated. He had even been known to admit that Manton and Crossley, to
counteract whose ridiculous ineffectiveness the Court of Appeal had been
founded, were decent enough, though of course no earthly good as
prefects. In the same way, it was from no sense of conscious duty that
he had educated and still watched over Jevons: “it was sport looking
after a kid,” was exactly the true account of the trouble he had taken.
Then, part of his growth, had come this violent adoration of Violet
Gray, as natural as the strutting of the young male bird, when first it
is conscious of another sex than his. David had suddenly perceived that
though in many things girls are “rotters,” there was something about
them that made it necessary to wear buttonholes, and, if possible, make
runs or take wickets for other reasons than those generally
necessary. . . .
The two boys strolled at Sunday pace down over the hot, sunny field,
which wore its air of Sabbatical and empty leisure. May had been a wet
month, and the grass still retained the varnished freshness of spring
except where in patches it had been worn by pitches or practice-nets.
But for the last fortnight no rain had fallen, and the light soil, quick
to dry, was beginning to get hard and give bowlers such as David the
crumbling wickets in which his soul delighted. Adams’s house had scraped
through the first ties of house-matches, for though David, on whom they
relied to thwart and discomfit their opponents, had proved on that
occasion to be extremely expensive, and quite useless as a bowler, he
had in some weird fashion of his own managed to make fifty of the most
awful runs ever scored, chiefly by amazing miss-hits over the heads of
point and slips. He had also been badly missed off the first ball he
received, which added humour to the performance, and a little later his
leg-stump had been smartly hit, though without displacing the bails. (He
had hailed this with a shriek of laughter.) But in the second tie played
last week he had shown himself in truer colours, and had been bowled
fair and square in both innings without scoring at all, but had done
things with the ball that really seemed inspired by Satan. He had grown
into a bowler of the googliest type, and had discovered, all for
himself, that if he let his shirt-sleeve wave in the air instead of
rolling it tight up round his elbow it presented a much more puzzling
outline to the batsman.[1] On that day there had been, too, a high
cross-wind, and all that most of the batsmen who were favoured with his
deliveries knew was that from very far off an immense lanky figure came
prancing in a curved run up to the wickets, and that from somewhere at
the end of clothes hung up to dry a quavering object that was supposed
to be a cricket-ball skidded through the air in such a manner that it
was really impossible to tell what it was doing or what it would do.
Sometimes when it looked most charged with incalculable waywardness it
did nothing but bounce as an innocent and rotund ball should; at other
times (chiefly when it looked almost pathetically guileless) it played
the lowest tricks that the laws of spin permitted. It kicked out like a
horse when it pitched, or it leaped nervously aside as if trying to
avoid the bat: in fact, the odds were that it did precisely what you
didn’t expect. Or, again, the demoniac Blazes would run up to the
wickets with less than his usual prance, but in a slow and thoughtful
manner as if he had a headache. But if the wary batsman imagined (as he
not unfrequently did) that this was the prelude to a slow and thoughtful
ball, he occasionally (though not always) found he was quite in error.
An extremely fast and straight ball was all that the thoughtful manner
meant, whereby we learn the danger of trusting to appearances. And what
made all these antics the more flustering and annoying was that David,
with guileless sincerity, frankly confessed that he was often by no
means clear himself what the ball was going to do.
“I always mean it to do something rum,” he said, “but of course it
doesn’t always come off, and sometimes it does just the opposite. That’s
such awful fun. It’s all silly tosh, my bowling, you know. Comes off in
house-matches sometimes, but any school team would hit me over the
moon.”
This perfectly sincere view of his own performance was not shared by
Humphreys, the captain of the school eleven who had twice been one of
David’s victims, and to whom this opinion was expressed.
“But the one you bowled me with in the first innings,” said that
much-injured young man, “came round my legs and took the middle-stump,
blast you. Didn’t you mean that?”
David put his head on one side, considering.
“Yes, I think I did,” he said. “It was rather a good ball for me. I
thought it might do something of the sort. Every one gets a good ball in
sometimes if they go on long enough.”
“Well, I wish you would keep them for school-matches,” said Humphreys.
“And second innings you had me with a roaring full-pitch, ninety-five
miles an hour. I thought it was only eighty-five, and so I missed it by
ten miles.”
David laughed.
“Sorry. It was rather a fast one,” he said. “I thought it had got you in
the tummy. Jolly glad it was only your wicket.”
“So’m I,” remarked Humphreys. “Come and bathe.”
* * * * *
Since then, every day had added to the pace of the ground, and this
Sunday afternoon, as David strolled down with Bags, he looked at the
turf with extreme content.
“Just my luck all over,” he said, “that it should be getting into the
state that suits me best for Old Boys’ match. Lord, what a pity I said
that! I shan’t be able to send down a decent ball now. But I should love
to bowl Frank. Bags, I do think about cricket so tremendously in the
summer half. I lie awake making plans.”
He took a short run and brought his arm over his shoulder in a
complicated fashion.
“Why shouldn’t I bring my arm up overhand like that,” he said, “and turn
my wrist over underhand? You might say that the ball would simply fly up
gently in the air and fall at my feet. But something might be done with
it. You can usually do something with anything if you give your mind to
it.”
“Like you with Jev,” remarked Bags.
“Oh, that’s only Adams’s rot.”
He broke off and focused his blue eyes on a group of figures coming up
the field towards them.
“Lord, here’s Mother Gray and Violet coming,” he said. “I say, is my tie
straight? Who’s the man with them?”
“Don’t know. Friend of theirs probably.”
“Clever fellow! Hope they’ll ask me to tea.”
David had been carrying his straw hat in his hand, but put it on, in
order to have the joy of taking it off to them.
“Same man who was in chapel this morning with them,” said Bags in an
undertone.
“Was he? Didn’t see him. Lord, doesn’t she look ripping?”
There is always some slight discomfort attached to a meeting which is
seen, while yet a long way off, to be coming, a difficulty in knowing
the right moment to cease being absorbed in the landscape or in
intelligent conversation with your friend, and to become conscious of it
in proper time to apply a suitable smile of recognition to the face.
David, with his tingling heart, managed it with wonderful ill-success.
He put on a brilliant smile long before it could be seen at all, and,
feeling as if his cheeks would crack, took it completely off again. Then
he tried to talk to Bags in a natural manner, and pointed to nothing at
all away to the right. Then he proceeded to talk to Bags again much too
long, and did not look up till the adorable one was but a couple of
yards off. On came the smile of recognition again, and he took off his
hat and dropped it. And, alas for the hope of being asked to tea, when
he picked up his hat again, the vision had already gone by, and it was
only the most instantaneous return of his smile that he reaped from all
those muddled manœuvres. So on they went, Bags with face red from
suppressed giggles.
“What are you laughing at, you ass?” asked David in an indignant
whisper. “I don’t see anything funny.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You were the funny man.”
“What did I do!” demanded David.
“First you grinned an awful grin miles too soon,” said Bags. “Then you
looked as grave as a judge with indigestion. Then, miles too late, you
gave another awful grin and dropped your hat. Sorry you didn’t get your
tea, but it was too funny for anything.”
David was radically incapable of ill-humour for more than a few seconds
at a time, and grinned in a less awful manner.
“I never felt such a silly fool,” he said. “And I’m not sure I like that
man. What do you suppose they were talking about so interestedly?”
“Can’t say; run back and ask them,” said Bags. “I thought he looked
rather a decent chap. Awfully good-looking too; a bit like Maddox.”
David gave a snort of disdain.
“Like your grandmother,” he observed in a withering manner.
“Which one? I’ve got two.”
David took hold of Bags by the shoulders, and ran him down the bit of
steep hill to the gate.
“The ugliest,” he said. “And the fattest. And the beastliest. I say,
though, it was rather a sell for me.”
“Complete suck,” said Bags.
* * * * *
There are exactly as many ways of falling in love as there are different
natures in the world, and since every one, boy or man or girl or woman,
falls in love off the same carpet, so to speak, on which he transacts
the other affairs of life, it followed that David’s first excursion into
the enchanted country was made with enthusiasm and gaiety and innocence,
and with that forgetfulness of himself that characterised his other ways
and works. That he was in love at all, any grown-up man, who was so
unfortunate as to forget what it was like to be a boy, would probably
have denied, calling his feelings calf-love at the most, but no boy,
unless he was a shrivelled old man, could doubt for a moment the
genuineness of David’s emotion. It seriously threatened for the next few
weeks to dethrone the dominant passion inspired by cricket, and, since
that absolutely refused to vacate the supreme throne, love squeezed
itself in and sat beside it, so that if David lay awake on Sunday
pondering over fresh wiles in the matter of his googlies, on Monday the
googlies would not enter his head at all, except as shadows, and he
would devote the whole of his insomnia (which perhaps lasted half an
hour) to the contemplation of the adorable Violet. At such times he
would give vent to a sound between a sigh and a groan, and Jevons from
the next bed would ask if he had tummy-ache. Then David would say
savagely, “No, you little ass, go to sleep”; and add in a minute or two,
“Thanks for asking, Jev.”
At this high level his adoration remained for a whole month.
Occasionally, as during the two days of the Old Boys’ match, he would be
more absorbed in cricket while Violet looked on from the throne of his
heart, even as she looked on from the balcony of the pavilion; but on
the day succeeding the glorious discomfiture of the Old Boys, cricket,
as an active principle in his mind, lapsed into a state of quiescence,
while Violet became volcanic again. He did not want anything from her
(though the thought of kissing her, a wild flight of impossible fancy,
sent his heart into his mouth); he only wanted that she should be she
and he an adorer: he could have given no further account of it than
that. All his other friends, Frank and his own sister, and Bags and
Plugs, were on a different plane. He loved Margery, he loved Frank, he
esteemed and relied on Bags, but none gave him any tremor, any sense of
excitement. But for Violet, his boyish heart was full of a sweet tumult
and confusion, whenever the enchantress came within eyeshot.
Meantime the strange young man who had roused David’s suspicions on
Sunday afternoon continued staying with the Grays, but his presence was
accounted for, since, to David’s great relief, he proved to be a cousin.
He proved also, which was satisfactory, to be a man who played cricket
occasionally for his county, and thus had a claim to respect, and took
part in a match against the masters, playing for them. On that occasion
he proceeded to hit David’s bowling to all parts of the compass with the
utmost ease and enjoyment, a feat that raised him in the bowler’s
estimation. Eventually David got him out with a ball about which Mr.
Leonard Gray knew absolutely nothing, but he had been treated with
wonderful contempt first. And as Gray retired he nodded in a friendly
manner.
“Glad you didn’t send that ball down sooner, Blaize,” he said.
Then, with the suddenness of a thunderbolt, the end came. Bags brought
the fateful news, while David was ecstatically employed on a model
flying-machine which Frank had given him.
“Did you ever see anything so ripping!” he shouted. “Frank sent it me
this morning. It flew the whole length of hall just now. Wait till I
wind it up again.”
David picked up the beloved machine and began winding it.
“What’s up!” he said looking at Bags. “Anything beastly happened?
Nothing wrong in the house, is there!”
“Oh, David, I’m so sorry,” said Bags.
David let go of the winder and the propeller whirred and pulled as the
wheels ran round.
“Well, get on,” he said.
“She’s engaged to that cousin,” said Bags. “Banns were given out
yesterday at the parish church. Plugs told me; his people were down and
he went with them to church instead of chapel.”
David felt the world topple round him. He sat down and turned very red
in the face.
“Oh” was all he said.
Then Bags came a step closer.
“I say, David,” he said shyly, “if you only knew how I hate anything
that hurts you. I should like to kill that chap.”
And his plain, rather goat-like face glowed with that which had so long
inspired him, namely, his affection for David, that shy, silent passion
of friendship.
David spun the propeller once or twice.
“Well, he’s a jolly lucky chap,” he said at length.
Then he looked at Bags and saw in his eyes just that blind devotion that
you can see in a dog’s eyes, if you understand dogs. He got up, and put
a hand on Bags’s shoulder.
“It’s ripping of you to care, Bags,” he said. “I’m no end
grateful. . . . Hell!”
-----
[1] Later in the year, it may be remembered, the M. C. C. legislated on
this subject.