matter what birds?” said young Bingo, with some asperity. “Any birds. The birds round about here. You don’t expect me to specify them by their pet names, do you? I tell you, Bertie, it hit me hard at first, very hard.”
“What hit you?” I simply couldn’t follow the blighter.
“Charlotte’s calculated callousness.”
“Oh, ah!” I’ve seen poor old Bingo through so many unsuccessful love-affairs that I’d almost forgotten there was a girl mixed up with that Goodwood business. Of course! Charlotte Corday Rowbotham. And she had given him the raspberry, I remembered, and gone off with Comrade Butt.
“I went through torments. Recently, however, I’ve—er—bucked up a bit. Tell me, Bertie, what are you doing down here? I didn’t know you knew these people.”
“Me? Why, I’ve known them since I was a kid.”
Young Bingo put his feet down with a thud.
“Do you mean to say you’ve known Lady Cynthia all that time?”
“Rather! She can’t have been seven when I met her first.”
“Good Lord!” said young Bingo. He looked at me for the first time as though I amounted to something, and swallowed a mouthful of smoke the wrong way. “I love that girl, Bertie,” he went on, when he’d finished coughing.
“Yes. Nice girl, of course.”
He eyed me with pretty deep loathing.
“Don’t speak of her in that horrible casual way. She’s an angel. An angel!