he gargled. “Betting! You don’t mean that they’re betting on this holy, sacred—Oh, I say, dash it all! Haven’t people any sense of decency and reverence? Is nothing safe from their beastly, sordid graspingness? I wonder,” said young Bingo thoughtfully, “if there’s a chance of my getting any of that seven-to-one money? Seven to one! What a price! Who’s offering it, do you know? Oh, well, I suppose it wouldn’t do. No, I suppose it wouldn’t be quite the thing.”
“You seem dashed confident,” I said. “I’d always thought that Wingham—”
“Oh, I’m not worried about him,” said Bingo. “I was just going to tell you. Wingham’s got the mumps, and won’t be out and about for weeks. And, jolly as that is in itself, it’s not all. You see, he was producing the Village School Christmas Entertainment, and now I’ve taken over the job. I went to old Heppenstall last night and clinched the contract.
Well, you see what that means. It means that I shall be absolutely the centre of the village life and thought for three solid weeks, with a terrific triumph to wind up with. Everybody looking up to me and fawning on me, don’t you see, and all that. It’s bound to have a powerful effect on Mary’s mind. It will show her that I am capable of serious effort; that there is a solid foundation of worth in me; that, mere butterfly as she may once have thought me, I am in reality—”
“Oh, all right, let it go!”
“It’s a big thing, you know, this Christmas Entertainment. Old Heppenstall is very much wrapped up