The soup was bad, and Miss Verever left most of hers and contrived to
be looking down at it very curiously every time Mrs. Dersingham glanced
across the table at her. As there were eight of them, Mrs. Dersingham
was not sitting at the end of the table, opposite her husband. Mr.
Golspie was there, and very much at his ease, putting away a very
ungentlemanly quantity of bread under that great moustache of his.
On Mr. Golspie’s right were Mrs. Dersingham, Major Trape, and Mrs.
Pearson, and on the other side were Miss Verever, Mr. Pearson, and Mrs.
Trape.
“And how,” said Miss Verever to Mrs. Dersingham, “did you enjoy your
Norfolk holiday this summer? You never told me that, and I’ve been
dying to know.” The smile that accompanied this statement announced
that Miss Verever could not imagine a more idiotic or boring topic,
that you would be insufferably dull if you answered her question and
terribly rude if you didn’t.
“Not bad,” Mrs. Dersingham shouted desperately. “In fact, quite good,
on the whole. Rather cold, you know.”
“Really, you found it cold?” And you would have sworn that the speaker
meant to suggest that the cold had obviously been manufactured for you
and that it served you right.
At the other end of the table, Major Trape and his host were talking
about football, across Mrs. Pearson, who nodded and smiled and shook
her mysterious curls all the time, to show that she was not really
being left out.
“Do you ever watch rugger, Golspie?” Mr. Dersingham demanded down the
table.
“What, Rugby? Haven’t seen a match for years,” replied Mr. Golspie.
“Prefer the other kind when I do watch one.”
Major Trape raised his eyebrows. “What, you a soccah man? Not this
professional stuff? Don’t tell me you like that.”
“What’s the matter with it?”
“Oh, come now! I mean, you can’t possibly--I mean, it’s a dirty
business, selling fellahs for money and so on, very unsporting.”
“I must say I agree, Trape,” said Mr. Dersingham. “Dashed unsporting
business, I call it.”
“Oh, certainly,” Major Trape continued, “must be amatahs--love of the
game. Play the game for its own sake, I say, and not as all these
fellahs do--for monay. Can’t possibly be a sportsman and play for
monay. Oh, dirty business, eh, Dersingham?”
“I’m with you there.”
A sound came from Mrs. Trape’s face and it seemed to declare that she
was with him too.
“Well, I’m not with you,” said Mr. Golspie bluntly. He did not care
tuppence about it, one way or the other, but there was something in
Trape’s manner that demanded contradiction, and Mr. Golspie was not the
man to ignore such a challenge. “If a poor man can play a game well,
why shouldn’t he allow that game to keep him? What’s the answer to
that? A man’s as much right to play cricket and football for a living
as he has to clean windows or sell tripe----”
“Tripe indeed! How can you, Mr. Golspie?” cried Mrs. Pearson, girlishly
shaking her curls at him.
“My wife hates tripe,” said Mr. Pearson. “Tee-tee-tee-tee-tee.”
“I disagree,” said Major Trape, stiffer than ever now. “Those things
are business, quite diff’rent. Games ought to be played for their own
sake. That’s the proper English way. Love of the game. Clean sport.
Don’t mind if the other fellahs win. Sport and business, two diff’rent
things.”
“Not if sport _is_ your business,” Mr. Golspie returned, looking darkly
mischievous. “We can’t all be rich amachures. Let the chaps have their
six or seven pounds a week. They earn it. If one lot of chaps can earn
their living by telling us to be good every Sunday--that is, if you go
to listen to ’em: I don’t--why shouldn’t another lot be paid to knock
a ball about every Saturday, without all this talk of dirty business?
It beats me. Unless it’s snobbery. Lot o’ snobbery still about in this
country. It pops up all the time.”
“What _is_ this argument all about?” Miss Verever inquired. And,
perhaps feeling that Mr. Golspie needed a rebuke, she put on her most
peculiar look and brought out her most disturbing tone of voice,
finally throwing in a smile that was a tried veteran, an Old Guard.
But Mr. Golspie returned her gaze quite calmly, and even conveyed a
piece of fish, and far too large a piece, to his mouth before replying.
“We’re arguing about football and cricket. I don’t suppose you’re
interested. I’m not much, myself. I like billiards. That’s one thing
about coming back to this country, you can always get a good game of
billiards. Proper tables, y’know.”
“I used to be very fond of a game of billiards, snooker too,” said
Mr. Pearson, nodding his head so that his fat cheeks shook like beef
jellies, “when I was out in Singapore. There were some splendid players
at the club there, splendid players, make breaks of forty and fifty.
But I wasn’t one of them. Tee-tee-tee----”
“We went to see Susie Dean and Jerry Jerningham the other night,” said
Major Trape, turning to Mrs. Dersingham. “Good show. Very clevah, very
clevah. You been to any shows lately, Mrs. Dersingham?”
“That’s true,” Mrs. Pearson informed her host and anybody else who
cared to listen. “When we were out in Singapore, my husband was always
going over to the club for billiards. And now he hardly ever plays.
I don’t think he’s had a game this year. Have you, Walter? I’m just
saying I don’t think you’ve had a game this year.”
“And so what with one thing and another,” Mrs. Dersingham told Major
Trape, “I’ve simply not been able to see half the plays I’ve wanted to
see. Something has to go, hasn’t it? We were out at the Trevors’--I
think you know them, don’t you?--the shipbuilding people, you know,
only of course these Trevors are out of that--they’re terribly in with
all that young smart set, Mrs. Dellingham, young Mostyn-Price, Lady
Muriel Pagworth, and the famous Ditchways. Well, what with that,
and then going to Mrs. Westbury’s musical tea-fight--Dossevitch and
Rougeot _ought_ to have been there and were only prevented from coming
at the last minute, but Imogen Farley was there and played divinely.
Oh, and then on top of all that, I went to see that new thing at His
Majesty’s--what’s it called?--oh, yes--_The Other Man_. And so I
haven’t had a single moment for any other show.”
“No, by Jove, you haven’t, have you?” said Major Trape, with whom this
miracle of the social loaves and fishes worked every time. “You’re
worse than Dorothy, and I tell her she overdoes it. Mustn’t overdo it,
you know.”
Mrs. Dersingham, wondering how long Agnes was going to be bringing up
the cutlets, shrugged her shoulders, and did it exactly as she had
seen Irene Prince do it in _Smart Women_ at the Ambassadors. “It _is_
stupid, I know,” she confessed charmingly, “and I’m always saying I’ll
cut most of it out--but--well, you know what happens.”
Miss Verever, wearing her most peculiar smile, leaned forward, caught
the eye of her hostess, and said, “But what _does_ happen, my dear?”
Mrs. Dersingham was able to escape, however, by plunging at once into
the talk at the other end of the table, as if she had not heard Miss
Verever’s inquiry. “Oh, have you been reading that?” she cried across
the table to Mrs. Trape, who did not look as if she had spoken for
weeks, but nevertheless had actually just conjured out several remarks.
“No, I _haven’t_ read it, and I don’t mean to.” But did Agnes mean to
bring the cutlets?
The talk at Mr. Dersingham’s end, as we have guessed, had suddenly
turned literary. Mrs. Trape had just read a certain book. It was,
she added, apparently throwing her voice into the claret decanter, a
very clever book. Mr. Dersingham had not read this book, and did not
hesitate to say that it did not sound his kind of book, for after a
jolly good hard day in the office he found such books too heavy going
and preferred a detective story. Mrs. Pearson was actually reading a
book, had been reading it that very afternoon, had nearly finished it
and was enjoying it immensely.
“And I’m sure it’s a story _you’d_ like, Mr. Dersingham,” she cried,
“even though there aren’t any detectives in it. I could hardly put it
down. It’s all about a girl going to one of those Pacific Islands, one
of those lovely coral and lagoon places, you know, and she goes there
to stay with an uncle because she’s lost all her money and when she
gets there she finds that he’s drinking terribly, and so she goes to
another man--but I mustn’t spoil it for you. Do read it, Mrs. Trape.”
The claret decanter murmured that it would love to read it, and asked
what the name of the book was, so that it might put it down on its
library list.
“I’ll tell you the title in a moment,” and Mrs. Pearson, bringing her
curls to rest, bit her lip reflectively. “Now how stupid of me! Do you
know, I can’t remember. It’s a very striking title, too, and that’s
what made me take it when the girl at the library showed it to me. Now
isn’t that silly of me?”
“I can never remember the titles either,” Mr. Dersingham assured her
heartily. “What was the name of the chap who wrote it? Was it a man or
a woman?”
“I _think_ it was a man’s name, in fact I’m nearly sure it was. It was
quite a common name, too. Something like Wilson. No, it wasn’t, it was
Wilkinson. Walter, do you remember the name of the author of that book
I’m reading? Wasn’t it Wilkinson?”
“You’re thinking of the man that came to mend the wireless set,” Mr.
Pearson replied, shooting his long neck at her. “That was Wilkinson.
You know the people, Dersingham--the electricians in Earl’s Court Road?”
“Oh, so it was. How silly of me!”
“Tee-tee-tee-tee-tee.”
Mrs. Pearson smiled vaguely but amiably, then said: “So you see I can’t
tell you _now_, but I’ll tell Mrs. Dersingham in the morning and then
she can tell you.”
A sudden silence fell on the table at that moment, perhaps because
there was a sort of scratching sound at the door, which opened, but
only about an inch or two. That silence was shattered by the most
appalling crash of breaking crockery, followed by a short sharp
wail. Then silence again for one sinking moment. The cutlets and the
vegetables had arrived at last, and a brown stain, creeping beneath the
door, told where they were.
“My God!” cried Mr. Golspie to Miss Verever, as Mrs. Dersingham dashed
to the door, “there goes our dinner.”
“Indeed!”
“You bet your life!” Mr. Golspie, earnest and unabashed, assured her.
Miss Verever and Major Trape exchanged glances, which removed Mr.
Golspie once and for all from decent society and handed him over to the
social worker and the anthropologist.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Dersingham had disappeared through the doorway, and
Mr. Dersingham was trying to follow her example but could not do so
because, what with cutlets, vegetables, gravy, broken dishes and
plates, a weeping Agnes, and a panic-stricken Mrs. Dersingham, there
was no space for him. So he stood there, holding the door open, with
his body inside the dining-room and his head outside.
“Oh, do shut the door, Howard,” the guests heard Mrs. Dersingham cry.
“All right,” the invisible head replied hesitatingly. “But I say--can’t
I--er--do anything? I mean, do you want me to come out or--er--well,
what do you want me to do?”
“Oh, go-in-and-shut-the-door.” And there was no doubt that in another
moment Mrs. Dersingham would have screamed, for this was the voice of a
woman in an extremity.
Mr. Dersingham closed the door and returned to his chair. He looked at
Major Trape, and Major Trape looked at him, and no doubt they were both
remembering the good old school, Worrelians together.
“Sorry, but--er--” and here Mr. Dersingham looked round apologetically
at his guests--“I’m afraid there’s been some sort of accident outside.”
Immediately, Mrs. Trape, Mrs. Pearson, Major Trape, and Mr. Pearson
began talking all at once, not talking about this accident but about
accidents in general, with special reference to very queer accidents
that had happened to them. Miss Verever merely looked peculiarly at
everybody, while Mr. Golspie finished his claret with a certain remote
gloom, as if he were a man taking quinine on the summit of a mountain.
Then the door, which had not been properly fastened, swung open
again, to admit a mixed knocking and gobbling and guggling noise that
suggested that Agnes was now lying on the floor, in hysterics, and
drumming her feet. Then came a new voice, very hoarse and resentful,
and this voice declared that it was all a crying shame, even if the
girl was clumsy with her hands, and that one pair of hands was one
pair of hands and could not be expected to be any more, and that while
notices were being given right and left, _her_ notice could be taken,
there and then. In short, the cook had arrived on the scene.
Mr. Dersingham arose miserably, but whether to shut the door again or
to make an entrance into the drama outside we shall never know, for
Mrs. Pearson, fired with neighbourly solicitude, sprang up, crying,
“Poor Mrs. Dersingham! I’m sure I ought to do something,” and was
outside, with the door closed behind her, before Mr. Dersingham knew
what was happening.
And Mrs. Pearson, once outside, did not simply intrude, did not gape
and hang about and get in the way, but took charge of the situation,
for though Mrs. Pearson may have been a foolish table-talker, may have
worn mysterious curls and been old-fashioned and monstrously girlish
and affectionate, she was a housewife of experience, who had weathered
the most fantastic tropical domestic storms in Singapore.
“I _knew_ you wouldn’t mind my coming out,” she cried, “and I felt I
must help, because after all we are neighbours, aren’t we? and that
makes a difference.”
“It’s too absurd,” Mrs. Dersingham wailed. “This wretched girl’s
smashed everything and ruined the dinner, and now she’s going off into
a fit or something out of sheer temper. And it’s all her own fault. I
engaged her sister to come and help her to-night, and then when her
sister couldn’t come, at the last minute of course, she wouldn’t let me
get anybody else, she said she could do it herself.”
Mrs. Pearson was looking at Agnes, who was still guggling and drumming
on the floor. “Only stupid hysterics. Get up at once, you silly, silly
girl. Do you hear? You’re in the way. We’ll pour cold water over her.
That will soon bring her round, you’ll see.”
The cook, who was standing in the hall, a few yards away, and had been
looking on with the air of a complacent prophetess, now began to lose
some of her rigidity. The mournful triumph died out of her face. She
had no respect for Mrs. Dersingham, but for some strange reason she
had almost a veneration for Mrs. Pearson, who was possibly a far more
ladylike and commanding figure in her eyes.
“That’s so,” the cook hoarsely declared now. “A jug of water’s what
she wants. Accidents will happen and one pair of hands can’t be two or
three pairs of hands, eight for dinner being out of all reason with
them steps and no service lift, but there’s no call to be lying there
all night, Agnes, having your hysterics and carrying on silly when
there’s all this mess to be cleared, let alone anything else.”
This treacherous withdrawal of a stout ally, combined with the talk of
cold water, soon brought the hysterics to mere choking and sniffing,
and in a minute or two Agnes was bending over the ruins. “I’ll clear
these away,” she announced between sniffs and chokes, “but I won’t
bring anything else and serve it, I won’t. I couldn’t if I tried, I
couldn’t. I haven’t a nerve in me body, not after what’s happened, I
haven’t.”
“But I shall have to give them _something_,” Mrs. Dersingham was
saying. Clearly she no longer included Mrs. Pearson among the guests.
Mrs. Pearson had ceased to be one of “them.”
“Of course you will, my dear,” cried Mrs. Pearson, her eyes gleaming
with a happy excitement. “Not that _we’d_ mind, of course. It’s the
men, isn’t it? You know what the men are? Now then, what about eggs?”
“Eggs,” the cook repeated hoarsely and gloomily. “There’s two eggs, an’
two eggs only, in that kitchen. Just the two eggs, and them’s for the
morning.”
“Listen, my dear.” And Mrs. Pearson clutched at her neighbour
affectionately and imploringly. “_Do_ leave it to me and I promise you
I won’t be ten minutes. I won’t, really. Now not a word! Don’t bother
about _anything_. Just you leave it to me.” She hurried towards the
outer door, pulled herself up before she reached it, and cried over her
shoulder, “But warm some plates, that’s all.”
During the subsequent interval, Mrs. Dersingham had not the heart to
return to the dining-room, though she did just look in, put her face
round the door and smile apologetically at everybody and say that it
was _too_ absurd and annoying and that the two of them, she and Mrs.
Pearson, would be back in a few minutes. She spent the rest of the
time superintending the salvage work outside the dining-room door
and helping cook to find enough fresh plates to warm. She felt hot,
dishevelled and miserable. She could have cried. Indeed, that was why
she did not slip upstairs to her bedroom to look at herself and powder
her nose, for once there, really alone with herself, she was sure she
would have cried. Oh, it was all too hateful for words!
“There!” And Mrs. Pearson stood before her, breathless, flushed, and
happy, and whipped off the lid of a silver dish.
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Dersingham in the very reek of the omelette, a fine
large specimen. “You angel! It’s absolutely perfect.”
“I remembered we had some eggs, and then I remembered we had a bottle
of mushrooms tucked away somewhere, and so I rushed upstairs and made
this mushroom omelette. It ought to be nice. I used to be good with
omelettes.”
“It’s marvellous. And I don’t know how to begin to thank you, my dear.”
And Mrs. Dersingham meant it. From that moment, Mrs. Pearson ceased to
be a merely foolish if kindly neighbour and became a friend, worthy of
the most secret confidences. In the steam of the omelette, rich as the
smoke of burnt offerings, this friendship began, and Mrs. Dersingham
never tasted a mushroom afterwards without being reminded of it.
“Don’t think of it, my dear,” said Mrs. Pearson happily, for her own
life, after months of the dull routine of time-killing, had suddenly
become crimson, rich and glorious. “Now have you got the plates ready?
You must have this served at once, mustn’t you? Where’s that silly
girl? Gone to bed? All right, then, make the cook serve the rest of the
dinner. She must have everything ready by this time. Call her, my dear.
Tell her to bring up the plates.” And they returned at last to the
dining-room, two sisters out of burning Troy.
Alas, all was not well in there. Something had happened during the
interval of waiting. It was not the women, who were all sympathetic
smiles and solicitude: Mrs. Trape even dropped the ventriloquial
effect, actually disturbed the lower part of her face, in order to
explain that she knew, no one better, what it was these days, when
anything might be expected of that class; and Miss Verever, though
retaining automatically some peculiarities of tone and grimace,
contrived to say something reassuring. No, it was not the women; it was
the men. Mr. Golspie looked like a man who had already said some brutal
things and was fully prepared to say some more; Major Trape looked
very stiff and uncompromising, as if he had just sentenced a couple of
surveyors to be shot; Mr. Pearson gave the impression that he had been
faintly tee-teeing on both sides of a quarrel and was rather tired of
it; and Mr. Dersingham looked uneasy, anxious, exasperated. There was
no mistaking the atmosphere, in which distant thunder still rolled.
The stupid men had had to wait for the more substantial part of dinner;
they had felt empty, then they had felt cross; and so they had argued,
shouted, quarrelled, not all of them perhaps, but certainly Mr. Golspie
and Major Trape. Probably at any moment, they would begin arguing,
shouting, quarrelling again. Mrs. Dersingham, very tired now and with a
hundred little nerves screaming to be taken out of all this and put to
bed, would have liked to bang their silly heads together.
Cook came in, breathing heavily and disapprovingly, and gave them their
omelette. There was not a single movement she made during the whole
time she was in the room that did not announce, quite plainly, that she
was the cook, that the kitchen was her place, that she did not pretend
to be able to wait at table and that if they did not like it they could
lump it. Her heavy breathing went further, pointing out that when she
did condescend to wait at table, she expected to find a better company
than this seated round it. Even Mrs. Pearson had apparently lost
favour, for she had her plate shoved contemptuously in front of her,
like the rest. Real ladies, that plate said, don’t rush away and cook
omelettes for other people’s dinner tables. “P’raps you’ll ring when
you want the next,” the cook wheezed, and then slowly, scornfully, took
her departure.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, Mrs. Dersingham,” said Major Trape,
“this omelette’s awf’ly good, awf’ly good. And there’s nothing I like
better than a jolly good omelette.”
A voice from Mrs. Trape’s direction said that it agreed with him.
“They’re right there,” said Mr. Golspie to Mrs. Dersingham, as if
the Trapes were not often right. “It’s as good an omelette as I’ve
had for months and months, and that’s saying something, because I’ve
been in places where they can make omelettes. They can’t make ’em
here in England.” And he said this in such a way as to suggest that
it was really a challenge to Trape, who was nothing if not patriotic.
Obviously, he and Trape had been quarrelling.
Major Trape stiffened, then smiled laboriously at his hostess. “Mr.
Golspie seems to think we can’t make anything in England. That’s where
he and I diffah. Isn’t it, Dersingham?”
“Well, yes, in a way, I suppose,” Mr. Dersingham mumbled unhappily. He
felt divided between Worrell and Angel Pavement, between his old and
respected school friend, Trape, with whom he instinctively agreed, and
the forceful man who was now saving Twigg & Dersingham and making it
prosperous, his guest for the first time, too; and it was a wretched
situation. He muttered now that there was a lot to be said on both
sides.
“There may be,” said Major Trape. “But I don’t like to hear a man
continually runnin’ down his own country. Tastes diffah, I suppose. But
I feel--well, it isn’t done, that’s all.”
“Time it was done then,” said Mr. Golspie aggressively. “Most of
the people I meet here these days seem to be living in a fool’s
paradise----”
“Now, Mr. Golspie,” cried his hostess with desperate vivacity, “you’re
not to call us all fools. Is he, Mrs. Trape? We won’t have it.” Then,
saving the situation at all cost, she turned to Miss Verever. “My dear,
I forgot to tell you, I’ve had the absurdest letter from Alice. When I
read it, I simply howled.”
“No, did you?” said Miss Verever.
“A-ha!” cried Mr. Dersingham, doing his best. “What’s the latest from
Alice? We must all hear about this.”
They were all listening now, all at peace for the moment.
“Oh, it was too ridiculous,” cried Mrs. Dersingham, despairingly
racking her brains to remember something amusing in that letter, or,
failing that, something amusing in any letter she had ever had from
anybody. “You know what Alice is--at least, you do, my dear, and so
do you. I suppose it isn’t really funny unless you know her. You see,
the minute I read a letter of hers, of course I can see her in my mind
and hear her voice and all that sort of thing, and unless you can do
that, well I dare say it isn’t so funny, after all. But, you see,
Alice--she’s my youngest sister, I must explain, and they live down in
Devon--oh, miles from anywhere. Will you ring, please, darling? Well,
Alice has a dog, the absu-u-urdest creature----”
She struggled through with it somehow, and fortunately cook made
such a noise clearing and then serving the sweet that most of the
anecdote, presumably the funniest part, was lost in the clatter.
The cook had been so noisy, so incredibly heavy in her breathing,
and so obviously disapproving, when she was serving the sweet,
that Mrs. Dersingham dare not have her up again to clear the table
for dessert, so as the fruit-plates and the finger-bowls, the port
decanter and glasses, were all on the sideboard, she made a joke of
it--showing the last gleam of vivacity she felt she would be able to
show for months--and she and Dersingham, assisted by Mr. Pearson, who
said--tee-tee-tee-tee-tee--that he was used to clearing a table, having
been well brought up, did what they could to make the dinner look as
if it were coming to a civilised end. Mrs. Dersingham felt that Mr.
Golspie, plainly a porty sort of man, and Major Trape might not want to
argue so unpleasantly once they had some port inside them. This was the
longest and most ghastly dinner she ever remembered. It was not really
very late, but it seemed like two in the morning. As she tried to peel
a very soft pear, she felt she wanted to throw it at the opposite wall
and then scream at the top of her voice.
It was then they heard a ring at the outer door. Perhaps the postman,
rather late and with something special to deliver. A minute or so
later, there came another and longer ring.
“The only time we were there it rained for a whole week,” said Major
Trape, concluding his account of the watering places, “and so I said,
‘Nevah again.’ Can’t imagine how these towns get their reputation.
These weathah reports they give out----”
Another ring, very determined this time.
“I’m sorry, but do go and see who that is at the door, my dear,” Mrs.
Dersingham cried, apologetically. “I’ve just remembered. Agnes has
gone to bed, and cook probably can’t hear or won’t hear. I don’t
suppose it’s anybody but the late post.”
Mr. Dersingham was absent several minutes, and somehow during that
time nobody appeared to want to talk. Mrs. Dersingham did not press
the fruit upon her guests. The moment the last piece was eaten, she
intended to rise from the table, and then--oh, thank Heaven!--the worst
was over. The men could stay on drinking port and quarrel like cats
and dogs if they liked. She would be out of it, among nice, silly,
comfortable women in the drawing-room, and so it would all be over.
And then, just as she was nearly succeeding in consoling herself, her
husband reappeared, and he was not alone. The idiot had brought a
complete stranger into the dining-room with him, a girl.
She was a very pretty girl, quite young, and on his face was that
fatuous smile which husbands always seem to wear in the company of
young and very pretty girls. All wives recognize and detest that
fatuous smile. It is bad at any time, but when it accompanies a girl
who is a complete stranger into the dining-room at the conclusion
of a disastrous dinner, and brings her into the presence of a wife
who has not felt even decently presentable for hours and hours and
who has been ready to scream for the last forty-five minutes, then
it is a catastrophe and a mortal injury. And so Mrs. Dersingham gave
Mr. Dersingham one look that sent that fatuous smile trembling into
oblivion. And then, half rising from her chair, Mrs. Dersingham looked
at the stranger, and decided at once that she had never before seen a
girl she disliked so much at sight as this one.
“I’m afraid--er--I don’t----” she began.
But the girl was not even looking at her. She was busy having her left
cheek brushed by the large moustache of Mr. Golspie, who had flung an
arm round her shoulders.
“Well, hang me, Lena girl,” Mr. Golspie was roaring, “if I hadn’t
forgotten all about you.”
“You would,” said the girl coolly. “You’re a rotten father. I’ve told
you that before. Now introduce me.”