Henry raised a scarlet face.
“’Oo are you?” he demanded.
This attack from the rear, coming on top of his other troubles, tried his restraint sorely,
“Well—” Freddie hesitated. It seemed silly to offer the fellow one of his cards. “Well, as a matter of fact, my name’s Rooke —”
“And who,” pursued Henry, “arsked you to come shoving your ugly mug in ‘ere?”
“Well, if you put it that way —”
“’E comes messing abart,” said Henry complainingly, addressing the universe, “and interfering in what don’t concern ‘im and mucking around and interfering and messing abart. — Why,” he broke off in a sudden burst of eloquence, “I could eat two of you for a relish wiv me tea, even if you ‘ave got white spats!”
Here Erb, who had contributed nothing to the conversation, remarked “Ah!” and expectorated on the sidewalk. The point, one gathers, seemed to Erb well taken. A neat thrust, was Erb’s verdict.
“Just because you’ve got white spats,” proceeded Henry, on whose sensitive mind these adjuncts of the costume of the well-dressed man about town seemed to have made a deep and unfavorable impression, “you think you can come mucking around and messing abart and interfering and mucking around. This bird’s bit me in the finger, and ‘ere’s the finger, if you don’t believe me—and I’m going to twist ‘is ruddy neck, if all the perishers with white spats in London come messing abart and mucking around, so you I take them white spats of yours ‘ome and give ’em to the old woman to cook for your Sunday dinner!”
And Henry, having cleansed his stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart, shoved the stick energetically once more through the railings.
Jill darted forward. Always a girl who believed that, if you want a thing well done, you must do it yourself, she had applied to Freddie for assistance merely as a matter of form. All the time she had felt that Freddie was a broken reed, and such he had proved himself. Freddie’s policy in this affair was obviously to rely on the magic of speech, and any magic his speech might have had was manifestly offset by the fact that he was wearing white spats and that Henry, apparently, belonged to some sort of league or society which had for its main object the discouragement of white spats. It was plainly no good leaving the conduct of the campaign to Freddie. Whatever was to be done must be done by herself. She seized the stick and wrenched it out of Henry’s hand.
“Woof-woof-woof!” said Bill the parrot.
No dispassionate auditor could have failed to detect the nasty ring of sarcasm. It stung Henry. He was not normally a man who believed in violence to the gentler sex outside a clump on the head of his missus when the occasion seemed to demand it: but now he threw away the guiding principles of a lifetime and turned on Jill like a tiger.
“Gimme that stick!”
“Get back!”
“Here, I say, you know!” said Freddie.
Henry, now thoroughly overwrought, made a rush at Jill: and Jill, who had a straight eye, hit him accurately on the side of the head.
“Goo!” said Henry, and sat down.
And then, from behind Jill, a voice spoke.
“What’s all this?”
A stout policeman had manifested himself from empty space.
“This won’t do!” said the policeman.
Erb, who had been a silent spectator of the fray, burst into speech. “She ‘it ‘im!”
The policeman looked at Jill. He was an officer of many years’ experience in the Force, and time had dulled in him that respect for good clothes which he had brought with him from Little-Sudbury-in-the-Wold in the days of his novitiate. Jill was well-dressed, but, in the stirring epoch of the Suffrage disturbances, the policeman had been kicked on the shins and even bitten by ladies of an equally elegant exterior. Hearts, the policeman knew, just as pure and fair may beat in Belgrave Square as in the lowlier air of Seven Dials, but you have to pinch them just the same when they disturb the peace. His gaze, as it fell upon Jill, red-handed as it were with the stick still in her grasp, was stern.