"Oh, right ho, if you say so."
"I do say so."
"Oh, well, in that case, right ho."
* * * * *
I don't know if you have ever tooled off to East Dulwich to offer a
strange female a hundred smackers to release your uncle George. In case
you haven't, I may tell you that there are plenty of things that are
lots better fun. I didn't feel any too good driving to the station.
I didn't feel any too good in the train. And I didn't feel any too
good as I walked to Kitchener Road. But the moment when I felt least
good was when I had actually pressed the front doorbell and a rather
grubby-looking maid had let me in and shown me down a passage and into
a room with pink paper on the walls, a piano in the corner, and a lot
of photographs on the mantelpiece.
Barring a dentist's waiting room, which it rather resembles, there
isn't anything that quells the spirit much more than one of these
suburban parlours. They are extremely apt to have stuffed birds in
glass cases standing about on small tables, and if there is one thing
which gives the man of sensibility that sinking feeling it is the cold,
accusing eye of a ptarmigan, or whatever it may be that has had its
interior organs removed and sawdust substituted.
There were three of these cases in the parlour of Wistaria Lodge,
so that, wherever you looked, you were sure to connect. Two were
singletons, the third a family group, consisting of a father bullfinch,
a mother bullfinch, and little Master Bullfinch, the last named of whom
wore an expression that was definitely that of a thug and did more to
damp my _joie de vivre_ than all the rest of them put together.
I had moved to the window and was examining the aspidistra in order to
avoid this creature's gaze, when I heard the door open and, turning,
found myself confronted by something which, since it could hardly be
the girl, I took to be the aunt.
"Oh, good-morning," I said.
The words came out rather roopily, for I was feeling a bit on the
stunned side. I mean to say, the room being so small and this exhibit
so large, I had got that feeling of wanting air. There are some people
who don't seem to be intended to be seen close to, and this aunt was
one of them. Billowy curves, if you know what I mean. I should think
that in her day she must have been a very handsome girl, though even
then on the substantial side. By the time she came into my life she had
taken on a good deal of excess weight. She looked like a photograph of
an opera singer of the 'eighties. Also the orange hair and the magenta
dress.
However, she was a friendly soul. She seemed glad to see Bertram. She
smiled broadly.
"So here you are at last!" she said.