“There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter.”
I could see the man was pained, but I did not try to heal the wound. What’s the word I want? Preoccupied. I was too preoccupied, don’t you know. And distrait. Not to say careworn.
I was still careworn when, next day at half-past two, the revels commenced on the tennis lawn. It was one of those close, baking days, with thunder rumbling just round the corner; and it seemed to me that there was a brooding menace in the air.
“Bingo,” I said, as we pushed forth to do our bit in the first doubles, “I wonder what young Thos will be up to this afternoon, with the eye of authority no longer on him?”
“Eh?” said Bingo, absently. Already the tennis look had come into his face, and his eye was glazed. He swung his racket and snorted a little.
“I don’t see him anywhere,” I said.
“You don’t what?”
“See him.”
“Who?”
“Young Thos.”
“What about him?”
I let it go.
The only consolation I had in the black period of the opening of the tourney was the fact that the Right Hon. had taken a seat among the spectators and was wedged in between a couple of females with parasols. Reason told me that even a kid so steeped in sin as young Thomas would