Mrs. Wrottesley had a theory, which she never asked nor expected any
one to share with her, that most men's mental development ceased at the
age of twelve years. She had watched five sons grow up with, in their
young boyhood, the hardly concealed conviction that each one of them
was destined to be a genius, and that each one would make his mark in
the world. But her sons, as they attained to the fatal age of twelve
years, seemed predestined to disappoint their mother's hopes. Most of
the men whom she knew, and whom her sons brought to the house, were
delightful boys, whatever their ages might be. She liked them, but she
wished sometimes that it were possible to meet a man with a mature
mind. The male interest, she determined, after giving much study to
the subject, centred almost too exclusively round playing with a ball.
She had heard men extolled as grand cricketers and magnificent putters
with an enthusiasm which could hardly have been greater if they had
saved their country or had died for a cause. And she admitted to
herself that the mind of a woman was deficient when she failed to do
justice to these performances.
Her reflections on these and kindred subjects this morning had been
induced by hearing of the determination of Canon Wrottesley to light
the rubbish-heap in the garden. The rubbish-heap had grown high and
Canon Wrottesley had determined to put a match to it. Mrs. Wrottesley
had been married too long not to know that whatever at the moment
engaged her husband's mind required an audience. Her sons also had
expected her to watch and applaud them did they in infancy so much as
jump a small ditch, and she knew that it was the maternal duty, and
admitted, also, that it was the maternal pleasure to watch and applaud
until such time as the several wives of her five sons should take her
place.
The whole of the vicarage household was in requisition as soon as their
reverend master had conceived the happy notion of firing the canonical
rubbish-heap in the far corner of the kitchen garden. Canon Wrottesley
engaged the attention of every one with a frank belief in his own
powers as an organiser. He found himself almost regretting that he
could not make the matter an occasion for a little gathering of
friends. He loved society, especially ladies' society, and he
purposely kept various small objects about his own room, which--to use
his own expression--might make a little bit of fun. There was a mask
half concealed behind a screen, which, if it did not provoke a start
and a scream from some fair visitor, had attention drawn to it by the
playful question, 'Who is that behind you?' There was a funny pair of
spectacles on the mantelshelf, which Canon Wrottesley would playfully
place upon his handsome nose, and to small visitors he would accompany
the action by a frolicsome 'wowf-wowf.' He loved juvenile parties when
he could wear a coloured paper cap on his head or tie a paper apron
round his waist, and probably his canonry had come to him through what
he himself called his social gifts rather than by his reputation as a
minister of religion. Perhaps he was at his best at a christening
party; he had won much affection from his parishioners by his
felicitous remarks upon these occasions. When the gravity of the
christening of the infant was over Canon Wrottesley always deliberately
relaxed. He chaffed the proud father, told the mother that the baby
was the finest in the parish, and wanted to know whose health he was to
drink where every one appeared so blooming.
'Now, mamma,' the canon said busily, 'let us have plenty of nice dry
wood to start the blaze, and then you must come down to the field and
watch us put a match to the pile. Cyprian, my boy, where are the old
newspapers kept? Fetch them, like a good son, and then you shall carry
a little camp-stool down for mamma to sit upon. Now my coat,'--this to
his butler--'and, Cyprian, tell Mary to find papa's old gloves.'
Mrs. Wrottesley left her morning's work to go to the meadow, and Canon
Wrottesley looked down the road once or twice to see if by a happy
chance some friend or neighbour might be passing to whom he could
proclaim his boyish jaunt. The 'Well I never, sir,' even of a rural
parishioner did in some sort minister to his vanity. An audience was a
necessity to him. He regretted that his cloth forbade him to indulge
in private theatricals, but he encouraged Shakespearean readings and
often 'dressed up to please the children.' Sometimes of an evening he
would perform upon the piano, indulging in a series of broken chords
which he called improvisation, and upon these occasions he felt that he
was a kind and thoughtful master when he set the drawing-room door open
so that the servants might hear; and as his servants thought so too it
was all eminently satisfactory.
This morning, the beauty of the weather having inspired him to the part
of a schoolboy, he avoided a gate and leaped a small fence into the
meadow, and he waged boyish fun upon grave-faced Cyprian, who longed to
be fishing. He greeted his two gardeners with an air of holiday, and,
having waved his stick to them, he called out some hearty remarks about
the weather.
Alas! when the corner of the meadow was reached it was found that the
rubbish-heap had already been fired, and nothing of it was left but the
smouldering ashes. The canon wondered why people could not leave
things alone, and was inclined to blame mamma. She surely might have
known how much he enjoyed this sort of thing, and have asked the
gardeners to leave it to him.
His boyishness, however, could hardly be repressed this morning; and,
speaking to his fourteen-year-old son as though his age might be five
or six summers, he clapped him on the back and bade him 'Never mind; we
will go for a merry jaunt to the ruins instead, and have a regular big
affair, and you shall boil a kettle, and we 'll have tea.--What do you
say, mamma?' Mrs. Wrottesley replied with the enthusiasm that was
expected of her, and the canon, with a 'here we are, and here we go'
sort of jollity, conducted her indoors to write notes of invitation to
friends to join the picnic. The canon dictated the notes himself, and
generally finished with a playful word or two suitable to each
recipient; when he failed at first to hit off the perfectly happy
phrase Mrs. Wrottesley had to write the note over again.
Foiled of his morning's occupation the canon walked up to Bowshott
himself with Mrs. Ogilvie's card of invitation. Mrs. Ogilvie frankly
and without a moment's hesitation refused to be one of the party; a
picnic was in her eyes one of those barbarous, not to say indecorous
things which she classed with bathing in the open sea or trying on a
hat in a shop. Why should one sit on the ground and eat indifferent
food out of one's lap? Mrs. Ogilvie was too sorry, but it was
impossible; she had friends coming, or letters to write, or
something--at any rate she was quite sure she was engaged. Mrs.
Ogilvie's manner always became doubly polite and charming when she
ignored the customary formalities of society or purposely travestied
them. No one could infringe social conventions with more perfect good
manners. Peter would go, of course, she said. Peter enjoyed eating
luncheon in snatches while he hopped about and waited on people; but
Mrs. Ogilvie preferred her meals at home.
The canon was disappointed; he loved getting the right people together,
and he knew that Mrs. Ogilvie's rare appearance in the neighbourhood
always made her a centre of interest at a party. He protested
playfully against her decision until a certain lifting of Mrs.
Ogilvie's eyebrows made his desire for her presence sound importunate,
and put an end to his hospitable pleadings.
'A charming woman,' protested the canon to himself as he walked down
the long avenue of Spanish chestnuts. 'A charming woman,' he repeated,
for one part of Canon Wrottesley always felt snubbed when he had been
talking to Mrs. Ogilvie, while the part of him called the man of the
world recognized something in her which this country neighbourhood
could not produce. His boyishness was quenched for a moment, but it
revived at the sight of Peter riding up to the gates of the park. An
invitation to the proposed merry-making was given to Peter, who was
ever so much obliged, but thought Canon Wrottesley had forgotten that
the 24th was the day of the races.
The Sedgwick Races, although perhaps not important from a sportsman's
point of view, were attended by many visitors, and had been so long
established and so generally approved by every one in the county that
they had come to have a certain local status. They were patronized by
clergy and laity alike, to whom the occasion was a sort of yearly
picnic. The racecourse itself was not large, but its surroundings were
in every way attractive. The short moorland grass made excellent going
for the horses, and a wood of beech trees, quite close to the modest
grand stand, had by right of prescription been tacitly assigned to
various county families who brought their lunches and teas there, and
whose long trestle tables, numbered and allotted by the stewards of the
course, were a favourite meeting-place for the whole neighbourhood.
Canon Wrottesley could hardly pardon himself for having forgotten the
date of such a notable occasion, and, alluding to himself as a 'winged
messenger,' he hastened to pay a number of morning calls such as he
enjoyed, and to cancel his invitation for a picnic in favour of lunch
or tea at the racecourse. Peter said that he was going to drive the
coach over, and hoped that Canon Wrottesley would perch there when he
felt so disposed, and that his mother, not being inclined to spend the
whole day at Sedgwick, would join them at tea-time. Miss Abingdon and
Jane were going to be kind enough to take her place and act as
hostesses at lunch.
Canon Wrottesley felt that he could not do better than see Miss
Abingdon in person and explain the change of plans, and he arrived, in
his friendly way, just as she and some guests who were staying with her
were going in to luncheon.
Miss Abingdon occasionally reminded herself that she had not met the
vicar until long after his marriage, and she still more frequently
assured herself that her feeling for him was one of pure admiration
untouched by sentiment such as would have been foolish at her age, and
at any age would have been wrong. But there were times like the
present--when the canon came in, unasked, in a friendly way, and hung
up his clerical hat in the hall--which, without going so far as to give
the matter a personal bearing, made it easy for Miss Abingdon to
understand why women married. She ordered another place to be laid,
and asked him to say grace almost with a feeling of proprietorship; and
she ordered up the particular brand of claret which the canon had more
than once assured her would be all the better for being drunk.
Jane came in presently from her morning ride, handsome and charming in
a dark habit and a bowler hat; and Toffy appeared looking white and
thin, and protesting that he was perfectly well; and Kitty Sherard came
in late, as usual, and hoped that something had been kept hot for her.
Kitty Sherard was a decorative young woman, with a face like one of
Greuze's pictures and a passion for wearing rose-colour. Her father
was that rather famous personage, Lord Sherard, one of the last of the
dandies, and probably one of the few men in England in the present day
who had fought a duel. He was still thought irresistible by women, and
perhaps the only sincere love of his life was that for his daughter
Kitty, to whom he told his most _risqué_ stories, and whom he found
better company than any one else in the world.
Miss Sherard was in a wilful mood this morning--a mood which, let it be
said at once, was one to which she was often subject, but it had been
more than usually apparent in her for the last few days. She began by
hoping, in the politest way, after she had sat about five minutes at
the luncheon-table, that Miss Abingdon did not mind the window being
opened, although it was a well-known fact that Miss Abingdon held the
old-fashioned theory that only the furniture should enjoy fresh air,
and that windows should be opened when rooms were unoccupied. So many
people rose to do Miss Sherard's bidding that Miss Abingdon, of course,
found it quite hopeless to try to assert herself. Kitty, further, had
a ridiculous way of eating, which Miss Abingdon could not approve. She
ate mere morsels of everything and talked the whole time, very often
with the air of a gourmet; and she would lay down her knife and fork,
after a meal such as a healthy blackbird might have enjoyed, as though
she had finished some aldermanic feast. She accepted a glass of Miss
Abingdon's very special claret and never even touched it; and later, in
one of the pauses of her elaborate trifling at luncheon, she told a
funny story which made every one laugh, and caused even Canon
Wrottesley to attempt to conceal the fact that he saw the point of the
story.
The worst of it was that Toffy encouraged her in everything she said
and did. These two had met in London this year, and had stayed at the
same house for Ascot, and it must be admitted by a faithful historian
that in her own particular wilful and provoking way Kitty had flirted
outrageously with Toffy. To-day she offered to cut up his food for him
because his right hand was still in a sling; and when Miss Abingdon
suggested, with deliberate emphasis in her voice, that a footman should
do it for him, Kitty pretended that the wounded man could not possibly
feed himself, and gave him pineapple to eat on the end of her fork.
When she sat in the veranda drinking coffee after lunch, she showed
Canon Wrottesley how to blow wedding-rings with the smoke of her own
favourite cigarettes; and she talked to him as though his early youth
might have been spent in a racing stable, and with the air of one
expert to another.
'I hear,' said Canon Wrottesley, when Miss Sherard had begun to play a
left-handed game of croquet with the crippled young man, 'that Sir
Nigel is going to ride at the Sedgwick Races. I was a fearless
horseman myself at one time, so I cannot quarrel with him for his
decision, but I only hope that his hand will be healed by the 24th.'
'He has a good mount,' said Peter, 'and I don't think it is much good
trying to persuade Toffy not to ride.'
'Kitty Sherard says she has laid the whole of her fortune on him,' said
Jane, 'so let 's hope that will bring him luck.'
'I believe,' said the canon, in a manner distinctly beatific towards
the subject of his remarks, 'that I enjoy that little race-meeting at
Sedgwick as much as anything in the year. We must all have our little
outings once in a way.'
There is no doubt that the canon took his little outings, as often as
he could get them, with a healthy, boyish pleasure.
On the day of the races, for reasons no doubt known to himself but
hidden from the rest of the world, the vicar masqueraded in the
character of a patriarch. His characters were frequently inconsistent
with his circumstances; often his boyishness would obtrude itself quite
unexpectedly at board meetings or on the parish council, while at other
times the mantle of the seer or prophet descended upon him on the most
inauspicious occasions. Had Mrs. Wrottesley spoken her mind, which she
never did, she might have thrown light upon the subject, but she was
not a convincing woman at the best of times. All her life she had kept
inviolate the woman's secret whether or not her husband was a
disappointment to her. No one knew from his wife if the little god of
a somewhat small and feminine community had feet of clay or no.
Arrived at the very delightful beech wood which formed a pleasant place
of encampment for tea-parties, Canon Wrottesley could only smile
absently at the picnic-baskets, and appear wrapped in thought when
addressed; he might have been mentally preparing his next Sunday's
sermon. Miss Abingdon thought that he was doing so and respected him
for it; she even tried to attune her mind to his, and endeavoured to
see vanity of vanities in this informal gathering of friends.
'We do not think enough of serious things,' she said.
The inhabitants of Sedgwick put on sporting airs and curiously cut
overcoats on two days in each year. The weather for the occasion is
nearly always cloudless, and the townsfolk have begun to think that
either they are very clever in arranging the date of their local
function, or that the clerk of the weather is deeply interested in
Sedgwick Races.
On this particular day the sun flickered as usual through the clean
leaves and boughs of the beech wood, doing its best to lend an air of
picturesqueness to lobster salads and aspics, and shone brilliantly on
servants, with their coats off, unpacking hampers at rows of long
tables, and on people busily engaged in the inartistic business of
eating.
In the paddock there was an unusual number of horses being led round
and round in a ring, and some well-known bookies--not often seen at the
little provincial meeting--were present with their raucous cries and
their money-bags.
Kitty Sherard carried a pair of field-glasses on a long strap, and
consulted from time to time a little gold-bound pocket-book in which
she added up figures with a business-like air. She believed in
Ormiston, which Sir Nigel Christopherson was riding, and she had
something on Lamplighter as well. She knew every bookmaker on the
course by sight, and had as much knowledge of the field as any one in
the ring. And she looked exactly like some very beautiful child, and
carried a parasol of rose-coloured chiffon beneath which her complexion
and eyes appeared to great advantage. She smiled whether winning or
losing, and ate a tiny luncheon with an epicurean air.
At four o'clock in the afternoon it is an accepted custom at Sedgwick
Races for every one to have tea before the last event, and then horses
are put to in coaches and carriages, and those who have attended the
meeting whether for business or pleasure drive back to their own homes,
or go slowly downhill in a long string to the little railway station
where, for two days at least in the year, the local station-master is a
person of importance.
Mrs. Ogilvie arrived at the racecourse, as she had promised to do,
about tea-time. She hardly ever cared to watch the races; but she
stood amongst her friends for a while in the pleasant shade of the
wood, and looked on at the little gathering with that air of detached
and hardly concealed weariness which she always felt on such occasions.
She congratulated Peter, who had won a rather closely finished race
earlier in the day; but her voice betrayed little interest in the
event, and an onlooker might have been surprised at the almost distant
way in which she spoke to him. She was sumptuously dressed, as usual,
and wore her clothes with extravagant carelessness. She found herself
at tea-time sitting next Canon Wrottesley, whose patriarchal mood
seemed to her unnecessarily affected, and she requested him to ask Miss
Sherard to come and speak to her. 'Kitty amuses me,' she said, with
one of her characteristic shrugs, 'and most people are so dull, are
they not?'
Canon Wrottesley felt that mixed sensation which association with Mrs.
Ogilvie always gave him--a feeling of resentment combined with a desire
to please. He rather hastily let the mantle of the seer drop from him,
and said, 'I wish our little party were not so much dispersed. Mr.
Lawrence from Frisby brought two charming friends with him, and they
much hoped to have been here to meet you. Falconer is their name--Sir
John and Lady Falconer. He has just been made Minister at Buenos
Ayres, as I dare say you know, and he told me they once had the
pleasure of meeting you in Spain, years and years ago.'
'I never remember people whom I have met years and years ago,' said
Mrs. Ogilvie. Her near-sighted eyes, with their trick of contracting
slightly when she looked fixedly at anything, narrowed as she spoke,
and the heavy lids closed lazily upon them.
Lady Falconer, meanwhile, had arrived at the tea-table and greeted Mrs.
Ogilvie with evident pleasure. 'I am afraid you will hardly remember
me, as it is a very long time since we met,' she said; 'but my husband
and I always remember how good you were to me when I was ill at Juarez.'
Mrs. Ogilvie rose and shook hands with a cordiality that was charmingly
expressed. Her eyes were no longer half-closed, and her colour never
varied. 'You were ill, were you not?' she said, in a manner that was a
little vague but polite and sympathetic.
'Yes,' said Sir John, 'and you let your maid come and nurse her. My
wife always said she would have died if it had not been for you.'
'The climate was abominable,' said Mrs. Ogilvie; 'every one felt ill
there. Why does one go to these out-of-the-way places?'
'It is very absurd,' said Lady Falconer, in a friendly way, 'to be
surprised at people growing up; yet I can hardly realize that Captain
Ogilvie, whom we met to-day, is the little boy who was with you at
Juarez. How time flies!'
'It more often crawls, I think,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, smiling, with her
mouth a little twisted to one side. And then she rose to go because
she never stayed long at any party, and not even the fact that Nigel
Christopherson was going to ride in the last race altered her decision.
At parting she was too glad to have met Lady Falconer, trusted that if
ever she cared to see a collection of tiresome pictures she would come
to Bowshott, and hoped that if the gardens would be of any interest to
her she would drive over some afternoon when it was not too hot, and
have tea with her--any afternoon would do. Had Mrs. Ogilvie been
giving an invitation to tea in a barn it is probable that her manner
would have been as distant, as casual, and as superb as when she
suggested, with a queer sort of diffidence, that people might care to
see the famous galleries and gardens of her magnificent house.
'How very interesting,' said Canon Wrottesley to Lady Falconer when the
carriage had driven away, 'your meeting like this!' The vicar's
acquaintance was not extensive, and that people should re-encounter
each other or have mutual friends always struck him in the light of a
strange coincidence.
'She has not altered much,' said Sir John Falconer, 'and yet it must be
many years since we met: I suppose she never was good-looking. Somehow
one seems unaware of it when one is speaking to her.'
'I could do nothing but look at her dress,' said Lady Falconer
good-naturedly. 'How is it that everything she wears seems to be in
such perfect taste?'
'Mrs. Ogilvie is a rich woman,' said Canon Wrottesley, enjoying a
proprietary way of talking of his neighbour, 'and she is able to
gratify her love of beautiful raiment. I do not understand these
things myself,' he went on, with a masculine air, 'but the ladies tell
me that her dresses are all that they should be.'
'I don't know what we should have done without her at Juarez,' said
Lady Falconer, in her peculiarly kind manner. 'Sir John and I were on
our honeymoon, and, like many other newly married people, we wanted to
be alone.'
'Dudley, the artist, told us about Juarez, I remember,' interpolated
Sir John, 'otherwise I do not suppose we should ever have heard of the
place. Dudley had been sketching there.'
'I had not a maid with me,' went on Lady Falconer, in her pleasant
voice, 'and Mrs. Ogilvie in the kindest way allowed a Spanish woman she
had with her to do everything for me.'
'Mrs. Ogilvie is always devoted to everything Spanish,' said Mrs.
Wrottesley. 'Her mother was Spanish, and I dare say you know she made
her home in Spain for six years after the eldest boy's death.'
'I did not even know that she had lost a son,' said Lady Falconer.
'How very sad!'
The crowds of gaily-dressed people about them, the shouts of the
bookmakers, and the pleasant sense of being on an enjoyable picnic
contrasted oddly with any reference to such banished topics as death
and sorrow.
'I consider that Mrs. Ogilvie is one of the most reserved women I ever
met,' said the canon, proceeding to give an epitome of a character
which he thought he--and perhaps only he--understood. 'She is
impulsive yet cautious, clever yet light-minded; for a woman her
intelligence is quite above the ordinary run, and yet she is often
hopelessly difficult to convince.' He leaned forward on the table
looking handsome and dignified, and his clean-shaven face had an
appearance more clever than was quite justified by his attainments.
'I am sure that Mrs. Ogilvie is a woman of deep affections,' said Lady
Falconer, whose tongue seemed framed for nothing but kind speeches.
'I remember,' said Sir John, 'how struck my wife and I were, that year
we met her in Spain, by her devotion to her son. It seemed to us to
have almost a touch of tragedy in it; but that, of course, is now
explained by hearing that she had just lost her only other child.'
'Poor Mrs. Ogilvie!' said Mrs. Wrottesley.
The words seemed incongruous. Mrs. Ogilvie, with her contempt for
pity, her sumptuous manner of living and of dressing, was hardly an
object for compassion; and Canon Wrottesley felt that his wife's
commiseration was out of place, although he was far too kind to say so
in public.
There was a lull suddenly in the noise of the race-course; the
bookmakers' harsh shouts ceased, and even conversation stopped for a
moment, for the last race had begun.
The last race was an interesting event. It was a steeplechase for
gentleman riders only, and friends of the riders were standing up, with
field-glasses to their eyes, watching with absorbed attention the
horses, which were still a great distance off on the other side of the
course. Jane was standing by Peter. Kitty Sherard was quite near; she
was not looking through field-glasses as the others were doing, but
stood leaning lightly on the balcony of the stand with her two hands
clasped on the wooden rail in front of her.
'Can you see who is leading?' said Jane, and received no answer to her
question, and then she saw that Miss Sherard was not looking at the
racecourse at all. Her face was white, and her hands, which were
clasped on the wooden rail before her, had a strained look about them,
and showed patches of white where the slender fingers were tightly
pressed on the delicate skin.
The last race involved some big fences, it is true; but then Kitty of
all people in the world was the last to be afraid of a stiff course.
It was not like her to keep her eyes turned away from the horses until
some one quite close to her said, 'Well, they 're over the water-jump
anyway,' when she suddenly raised her field-glasses, with hands that
were trembling a little, and kept her eyes fixed on the race. It was
going to be a close finish, most people thought, and as the horses came
round the farther corner you could, as the saying goes, have spread a
tablecloth over them. Toffy's horse closely hugged the rails and was
kept well in hand; while, of the two in front of him, one was showing
signs of the pace and the other had not much running left in him.
These two soon tailed off, when the favourite (dark green and yellow
hoops) came through the other horses and rode neck to neck with
Toffy's. It became a race between these two, and it was evident that
the finish was going to be a close one.
'Toffy's not fit to ride,' said the voice of a young man who would have
liked Toffy to win the race, although he knew better than to back him.
'He is as mad as ten hatters to have ridden to-day.'
'His weight is right enough,' said another manly voice, with a laugh;
'it's extraordinary how a man of his height can ride so light.
Christopherson 's a regular bag of bones.'
'I wish to goodness they wouldn't talk!' said Kitty suddenly under her
breath.
The two horses came on neck to neck to the last fence but one.
'By gad, he knows how to ride!' went on the masculine voice, 'but
Spinach-and-Eggs is on the better horse of the two.'
The ground was in splendid going condition and the two horses raced
over it. They could see Christopherson's face now, and Toffy was
smiling slightly, while the other man's teeth were firmly set. Their
two stirrups clanged together as their horses rose to the rails and
galloped on to the last fence.
And there, of course, Toffy's horse fell. It was not his fault; there
was a bit of soft ground just where he landed, his horse blundered and
fell, and the favourite rode past the winning-post, an easy winner.
The spectators in the grand stand could see Christopherson pick himself
up a moment later and lead his horse home; but there was one moment,
when the rider behind him took the last jump, in which for a fraction
of time it seemed more than possible that he might land on the top of
Sir Nigel. For a breathless space there was that dramatic silence
which may be felt when a concourse of people literally hold their
breath. Miss Abingdon covered her face for a moment, and Jane heard
Peter say 'Good God!'
The next moment the danger was over, and Jane was surreptitiously
handing Miss Sherard a handkerchief drenched in eau-de-Cologne, for
Kitty had sat down suddenly and her face was white. She did not speak,
but she looked up into Jane's face for a moment, and the look said as
plainly as possible, 'I can't help it--don't tell any one.'
'It was a horribly near thing,' Jane said, in order to explain Kitty's
pallor to herself, 'and I 'm afraid it has given you rather a turn.'
Miss Sherard's feeling of faintness was only momentary, and already the
bright colour was in her cheeks again and she laughed and said, 'It was
not the jump, really, Jane; but I am a horrible gambler, and I put my
very last shilling on Toffy.'