“O, crikey, wouldn’t he!” said a vulgar onlooker. “Like a sugar-barrel
in a weskit.”
Then, as everybody roared, I lost my temper.
“Don’t be a fool,” whispered Sweeting. “It’s the way he’ll get his
change out of you.”
“Change!” I snapped furious. “No change could be for the worse with
him, I should think. Let me pass, please!”
The odious wretch was pursuing me all the time I spoke, while the
others hemmed me in, edging me towards him and roaring with laughter.
Sweeting himself made no effort to assist me, but stood to one side,
irresistibly giggling, though with a certain anxiety in his note.
“Call off your puppies!” I cried ragingly, and with the word was sent
flying into the very arms of Slater. I felt something rip, and at a
blow my hat sink over my eyes; and then a chill friendly voice entered
into the mêlée.
“O, look here, Slater, that’ll do, you know!”
I wrenched my eyes free. My champion was not Sweeting, but Voules, Sir
Francis Voules, of whom more hereafter. He was cool and vicious, and
as faultlessly dressed as the others, but in a manner somehow superior
to the foppery of their extreme youth. He carried a light overcoat on
his arm.
“O! _will_ it?” said Slater.
“Yes, I said so,” said Voules, pausing a moment from addressing me to
scan him. Slater slouched back to his table. Nobody laughed again.
In the meantime, Sir Francis was helping me to restore my hat to
shape, and to don _his_ overcoat.
“Yours is split to the neck,” he said. “Now, let’s go.”
He took my arm, and we strolled off together. The crowd, quite
respectful, parted, and we were engulfed in it.
I was grateful to Voules, of course, but inexplicably resentful of his
cool masterfulness. Truth to tell, we were souls quite antipathetic;
and now he had put me right—with everybody but myself. In a helpless
attempt to restore that balance, I snarled fiercely, smacking fist
into palm—
“I’ll have the law of that beast! You know him, it seems? I can’t
congratulate you on your friends.”
“Sweeting was most to blame,” said Voules quietly.