He gloomily withdrew.
Mr. Marrapit’s face was angrily twitching.
The moment was not propitious for continuing her conversation,
and with a little sigh Mrs. Major withdrew.
But it was upon that night that she inscribed in her
diary:
"Getting on with Mr. M. Should suc. Precip.
fat."
A last peep, ere we hurry across the bridge, will
disclose to us Mr. Bob Chater still pressing upon
Mary the attentions which her position, in relation
to his, made it so difficult for her to escape.
Piqued by her attitude towards him, he was the more
inflamed than ordinarily he would have been by the
fair face and neat figure that were hers. Yet
he made no headway; within a month of the date of his
return to Palace Gardens was as far from conquest
as upon that night in the nursery.
To a City friend, Mr. Lemuel Moss, dining at 14 Palace
Gardens with him one night, he explained affairs.
“Dam’ pretty girl, that governess of yours,
or whatever she is,” said Mr. Moss, biting the
end from a cigar in the smoking-room after dinner.
“Lucky beggar you are, Bob. My mater won’t
have even a servant in the place that wouldn’t
look amiss in a monkey-house. Knows me too well,
unfortunately,” and Mr. Moss, taking a squint
at himself in the overmantel, laughed—well
enough pleased.
Bob pointed out that there was not so much luck about
it as Mr. Moss appeared to think. “Never
seen such a stand-offish little rip in all my life,”
he moodily concluded.
“What, isn’t she—?”
Bob understood the unvoiced question. “Won’t
even let a chap have two minutes’ talk with
her,” he said, “let alone anything else.”
Mr. Moss stretched himself along the sofa; rejoined:
“Oh, rats! Rats! You don’t know
how to manage ’em—that’s what
it is.”
“I know as well as you, and a dashed sight better,
I don’t mind betting,” Bob returned with
heat. In some circles it is an aspersion upon
a man’s manliness to have it hinted that a petticoat
presenting possibilities has not been ruffled.
“Well, it don’t look much like it.
I caught her eye in the passage when we were coming
downstairs, and you don’t tell me—not
much!”
“Did you though?” Bob said. Himself
he had never been so fortunate.
“No mistake about it. Why, d’you
mean to say you’ve never got as far as that,
even?”
“Tell you she won’t look at me.”
Mr. Moss laughed. Enjoyed the “score”
over his host for a few moments, and then:
“Tell you what it is, old bird,” said
he, “you’re going the wrong way about
it. I know another case just the same. Chap
out Wimbledon way. His people kept a girl—topper
she was, too—dark. He was always messing
round just like you are, and she was stand-offish as
a nun. One night he came home early, a bit screwed—people
out—girl in. Met her in the drawing-room.
