system of telegraphy that had been flashing from eye to eye of the three ladies ceased.
A drive in the family tonga was proposed; but Mrs. and Miss Bubbleby had to meet the chaplain's wife on business. That need not prevent Miss Clara and myself taking the air together.
To the cold world, i.e., to the people we met, I daresay we appeared to be merely jogging along with the uncomfortable motion peculiar to tongas; but dead Moslems are blest indeed if the cushioned clouds of Muhammad's paradise offer anything half so delightful as that seat by Clara Bubbleby's side was to me. Mr. Cheetham, the Lancashire man, met us and vouchsafed a louring nod in reply to the sweet girl's arch imitation of a coachman's salute with raised elbow.
Looking back on that happy drive in a conveyance whose springs were not so elastic as our spirits, and on other little incidents of my brief acquaintance with the belle of Ajaibgaum, I am fain to admit that she was an egregious flirt and that I was a blind ass. This discovery has not the merit of novelty; but it may establish a claim to my reader's sympathy. For I doubt not that at some period of his or her existence he or she has been either one or the other.
The lovely Clara, after the manner of her kind, enjoyed using me as a foil to the broad-shouldered and broader-tongued Cheetham. For three happy days I almost lived at the hospitable Bubbleby bungalow, where Mrs. Bubbleby treated me with a confidential and knowing air which was more amusing than intelligible. I did my best to be civil to the Lancashire interloper; but it was clear there was no love lost between us. He grunted contemptuously during my most entertaining conversation; he took a pleasure in not knowing and never having heard of things and people to which I referred; and when he did his utmost to be polite, there was an expression in his eye which could only be adequately rendered by the vulgar phrase—"I should like to punch your head." When the inventor returned he was more mysterious and confidential than ever, and bore a still bigger burden of papers. He dragged me once more to that dreadful stand, and was beginning his descriptions anew, when I hailed the appearance of Mr. Twitchley Crowdie at the head of a peripatetic jury deliberating on the merits of rival cotton-gins.
