He conversed rather awkwardly with Bundle in stilted English and they both welcomed the interruption of the joyous Mr. O’Rourke. Presently Bill bustled in—there is no other word for it. In the same such way does a favoured Newfoundland make his entrance, and at once came over to Bundle. He was looking perplexed and harassed.
“Hullo, Bundle. Heard you’d got here. Been kept with my nose to the grindstone all the blessed afternoon or I’d have seen you before.”
“Cares of State heavy tonight?” suggested O’Rourke sympathetically.
Bill groaned.
“I don’t know what your fellow’s like,” he complained. “Looks a good-natured, tubby little chap. But Codders is absolutely impossible. Drive, drive, drive, from morning to night. Everything you do is wrong, and everything you haven’t done you ought to have done.”
“Quite like a quotation from the prayer book,” remarked Jimmy, who had just strolled up.
Bill glanced at them reproachfully.
“Nobody knows,” he said pathetically, “what I have to put up with.”
“Entertaining the Countess, eh?” suggested Jimmy. “Poor Bill, that must have been a sad strain to a woman hater like yourself.”
“What’s this?” asked Bundle.
“After tea,” said Jimmy with a grin, “the Countess asked Bill to show her round the interesting old place.”
“Well, I couldn’t refuse, could I?” said Bill, his countenance assuming a brick-red tint.