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.
Still, rummy as it might seem, here he was. And, aching for the sight of a friendly face, I gave tongue like a bloodhound.
“Bingo!”
He spun round; and, by Jove, his face wasn’t friendly after all. It was what they call contorted. He waved his arms at me like a semaphore.
“ ’Sh!” he hissed. “Would you