“We were just going down to the beach,” I said.
“Yes?” said the girl. She listened for a moment. “So you’re having your
piano tuned?” she said. “My aunt has been trying to find a tuner for
ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to come on to us when
he’s finished here?”
“Er—not yet!” I said. “Not yet, if you don’t mind. He can’t bear to be
disturbed when he’s working. It’s the artistic temperament. I’ll tell
him later.”
“Very well,” she said, getting up to go. “Ask him to call at Pine
Bungalow. West is the name. Oh, he seems to have stopped. I suppose he
will be out in a minute now. I’ll wait.”
“Don’t you think—shouldn’t we be going on to the beach?” I said.
She had started talking to the kid and didn’t hear. She was feeling in
her pocket for something.
“The beach,” I babbled.
“See what I’ve brought for you, baby,” she said. And, by George, don’t
you know, she held up in front of the kid’s bulging eyes a chunk of
toffee about the size of the Automobile Club.
That finished it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid
was all worked up in his part. He got it right first time.
“Kiss Fweddie!” he shouted.
And the front door opened, and Freddie came out on to the veranda, for
all the world as if he had been taking a cue.
He looked at the girl, and the girl looked at him. I looked at the
ground, and the kid looked at the toffee.
“Kiss Fweddie!” he yelled. “Kiss Fweddie!”
The girl was still holding up the toffee, and the kid did what Jimmy
Pinkerton would have called “business of outstretched hands” towards
it.
“Kiss Fweddie!” he shrieked.
“What does this mean?” said the girl, turning to me.
“You’d better give it to him, don’t you know,” I said. “He’ll go on
till you do.”
She gave the kid his toffee, and he subsided. Poor old Freddie still
stood there gaping, without a word.
“What does it mean?” said the girl again. Her face was pink, and her
eyes were sparkling in the sort of way, don’t you know, that makes a
fellow feel as if he hadn’t any bones in him, if you know what I mean.
Did you ever tread on your partner’s dress at a dance and tear it, and
see her smile at you like an angel and say: “_Please_ don’t apologize.
It’s nothing,” and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as
if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up
and hit you in the face? Well, that’s how Freddie’s Angela looked.
“_Well?_” she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much.
Then I said, “Oh, well, it was this way.” And, after a few brief
remarks about Jimmy Pinkerton, I told her all about it. And all the
while Idiot Freddie stood there gaping, without a word.
And the girl didn’t speak, either. She just stood listening.
And then she began to laugh. I never heard a girl laugh so much. She
leaned against the side of the veranda and shrieked. And all the while
Freddie, the World’s Champion Chump, stood there, saying nothing.
Well I sidled towards the steps. I had said all I had to say, and it
seemed to me that about here the stage-direction “exit” was written in
my part. I gave poor old Freddie up in despair. If only he had said a
word, it might have been all right. But there he stood, speechless.
What can a fellow do with a fellow like that?
Just out of sight of the house I met Jimmy Pinkerton.
“Hello, Reggie!” he said. “I was just coming to you. Where’s the kid?
We must have a big rehearsal to-day.”
“No good,” I said sadly. “It’s all over. The thing’s finished. Poor
dear old Freddie has made an ass of himself and killed the whole show.”
“Tell me,” said Jimmy.