“ Mr. Filmer is president of the Anti-Tobacco League. Nor will you drink alcoholic stimulants.”
“Oh, dash it!”
“And you will kindly exclude from your conversation all that is suggestive of the bar, the billiard-room, and the stage-door. Mr. Filmer will judge you largely by your conversation.”
I rose to a point of order.
“Yes, but why have I got to make an impression on this—on Mr. Filmer?”
“Because,” said the old relative, giving me the eye, “I particularly wish it.”
Not, perhaps, a notably snappy comeback as comebacks go; but it was enough to show me that that was more or less that; and I beetled out with an aching heart.
I headed for the garden, and I’m dashed if the first person I saw wasn’t young Bingo Little.
Bingo Little and I have been pals practically from birth. Born in the same village within a couple of days of one another, we went through kindergarten, Eton, and Oxford together; and, grown to riper years, we have enjoyed in the old metrop. full many a first-class binge in each other’s society. If there was one fellow in the world, I felt, who could alleviate the horrors of this blighted visit of mine, that bloke was young Bingo Little.
But how he came to be there was more than I could understand. Some time before, you see, he had married the celebrated authoress, Rosie M. Banks; and the last I had seen of him he had been on the point of accompanying her to America on a lecture-tour. I distinctly remembered him cursing rather freely because the trip would mean his missing Ascot.