“It’s very hard luck on you, Tredwell. Having to clear and then get lunch on the table by one o’clock.”
“I am accustomed to the ways of young gentlemen, m’lady.”
The reproof was dignified, but unmistakable.
So might a prince of the Church reprove a Turk or an infidel who had unwittingly committed a solecism in all good faith.
Lady Coote blushed for the second time that morning. But a welcome interruption occurred. The door opened and a serious, spectacled young man put his head in.
“Oh, there you are, Lady Coote. Sir Oswald was asking for you.”
“Oh, I’ll go to him at once, Mr. Bateman.”
Lady Coote hurried out.
Rupert Bateman, who was Sir Oswald’s private secretary, went out the other way, through the window where Jimmy Thesiger was still lounging amiably.
“Morning, Pongo,” said Jimmy. “I suppose I shall have to go and make myself agreeable to those blasted girls. You coming?”
Bateman shook his head and hurried along the terrace and in at the library window.
Jimmy grinned pleasantly at his retreating back. He and Bateman had been at school together, when Bateman had been a serious, spectacled boy, and had been nicknamed Pongo for no earthly reason whatever.
Pongo, Jimmy reflected, was very much the same sort of ass now that he had been then. The words “Life is real, life is earnest” might have been written specially for him.