boards, with a rickety handrail, cried "Pax!" and blew his nose with loud fervour.
"Morning," he said immediately.
"Morning," said Johnson. "Got a cold, ain't you?"
"Ah! I shouldn't have a cold if I'd got boots like yours," returned Gerald admiringly. "Look at them. Anyone ud know your fairy footstep a mile off. How do you ever get near enough to any one to arrest them?" He skipped off the landing-stage, whispered as he passed Johnson, "Courage, promptitude, and dispatch. That's the place," and was off again, the active leader of an active procession.
"We've brought a friend home to dinner," said Kathleen, when Eliza opened the door. "Where's Mademoiselle?"
"Gone to see Yalding Towers. To-day's show day, you know. An’ just you hurry over your dinners. It's my afternoon out, and my gentleman friend don't like it if he's kept waiting."
"All right, we'll eat like lightning," Gerald promised. "Set another place, there's an angel."
They kept their word. The dinner—it was minced veal and potatoes and rice-pudding, perhaps the dullest food in the world—was over in a quarter of an hour.
"And now," said Mabel, when Eliza and a jug of hot water had disappeared up the stairs together, "where's the ring? I ought to put it back."
"I haven't had a turn yet," said Jimmy.
